


A Place for Ourselves

by mojo_da_jojo



Series: Join Me in Heaven, and Sorrow No More [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, Boundaries, Consent is Important Folks, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Feelings and Things, Gratuitous Overuse of Dalish Culture, Sex, Sisters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-01-29 02:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12621284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mojo_da_jojo/pseuds/mojo_da_jojo
Summary: Hello again! Welcome to the latest installment of this out-of-control nonsense 'verse, the blame for which can be assigned entirely toTrish,a.k.a. the world's best cheer-reader.Just a note on the 'verse order, here: this work takes place at the same time asYours to Give, but this one should be read first due to spoilers and plot-type things.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Welcome to the latest installment of this out-of-control nonsense 'verse, the blame for which can be assigned entirely to [Trish,](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz) a.k.a. the world's best cheer-reader. 
> 
> Just a note on the 'verse order, here: this work takes place at the same time as [Yours to Give](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12621404/chapters/28756316), but this one should be read first due to spoilers and plot-type things.

_And the People raised the blades of the fallen soldiers to the heavens_  
_And rejoiced. And Shartan said to them:_  
_"No longer are we hunted! We shall never again_  
_Be prey, waiting to be struck down!_  
_Let us take up the blades of our enemies_  
_And carve a place for ourselves in this world!"_

_The People heard him, and girded themselves_  
_In the armor of the dead_  
_And sharpened their blades and arrows_  
_And prepared for war._

_\- Shartan 9:13-14_

There was a time, the _hahrens_ say, when the newly-freed elven People had set out to the land that Andraste had promised them, and claimed a kingdom of their own, and answered to no human.

There was a time when the Emerald Knights protected a border that stretched from the Waking Sea to the southern lands beyond the Arbor Wilds, lands which have now been lost, and remain uncharted to this day.

There was a time when the Dales had extended their hands in friendship to the humans who sought their aid; but they were betrayed, and so they lashed out, conquering a bloody path from Montsimmard to Val Royeaux. And for this, the human Chantry destroyed them.

Now, seven hundred years later, the Winter Palace stands in Halamshiral as a monument to human savagery and spilled elven blood. Human nobles rule the Dales, and the descendants of those who survived the massacre are left to wander the wilderness, salvaging what they can of their dying culture. They carefully practice what is left of their lost language, guard what few precious artifacts they can salvage, and pray for the day the Creators will deliver them to a new beginning. And every ten years, all Dalish clans large and small gather in one place for _arlathvhen_ , a month-long celebration of their culture and heritage.

Lavellan knows these stories by heart. All Dalish learn them, as children. Still, when she'd sat by the fire as a child, listening to her hahren tell stories of Andruil and Ghilan'nain, Falon'Din and Dirthamen, ancient heroes and the Forgotten Ones and the Dread Wolf - well, she'd never imagined she'd be experiencing them quite so... literally.

When she'd first learned the truth about Solas and the Evanuris, it had taken her a long time to figure out how to tell her sister - the Keeper of one of the largest and oldest Dalish clans, and now a member of Wycome's city council. On the one hand, she and Deshanna had always been close, and there was little about the Inquisition's adventures that Lavellan _hadn't_ told her. On the other, telling Deshanna the truth of their people's history would be a precursor to having to explain it all to her entire clan, and eventually all Dalish, and the thought of that was... daunting, to say the least.

In the end, she'd settled on the truth. Solas had withheld that truth from her for long enough; she wouldn't do the same to her own sister. So she'd gone in person to Wycome to explain, unwilling to put it all in a letter.

Deshanna had taken the grim news fairly well - not all that surprising, considering she tended to be the more even-tempered of the two of them - and Lavellan had left it to her to tell the other Keepers. And that had been the last time she'd seen her sister in person, though they'd exchanged countless letters since then.

The closer Lavellan draws to Deshanna's office, however - still strange, a Dalish elf with an actual office in an actual city - the more she realizes there's just no good way to tell someone that the gods they used to worship are potentially coming back to kill, terrorize, or enslave them all. Traveling by horse or ship might have given her time to figure something out, but the eluvian had rendered that unnecessary.

Most of the Dalish clans scattered across Thedas, Lavellan knows, have already begun the long journey to _arlathvhen,_ but Clan Lavellan had been selected as the host clan this year, since Wycome has recently become a safe haven of sorts for Dalish elves and city elves alike. The festival is forbidden to outsiders, of course, so the camps will be made deep into the forest outside Wycome, away from prying eyes. 

The ban on non-Dalish guests meant that Dorian, Cullen, Varric and Sera weren't permitted; Merrill had been planning to attend _arlathvhen,_ but Hawke's sudden reappearance had put an end to that. The idea of Lavellan traveling alone had been squashed, but the only option left, of course, had been Solas.

He isn't exactly Dalish, as he'd pointed out, but he can pass as one with his extensive knowledge of their lore. And if anyone questions his lack of vallaslin, well, Lavellan's missing hers too, and there's no shortage of Dalish these days that had taken the Dread Wolf's blessing and had theirs removed.

Cullen, especially, hadn't liked the idea of the two of them being on their own; Lavellan had not-so-gently reminded him that she was a grown woman who could take care of herself, and besides, for someone so adamant that he wasn't a templar anymore, he sure had been doing a lot of mage-watching lately. 

It had been Dorian who'd persuaded him in the end. There was something he wanted to look into, he'd claimed, and for some reason needed the assistance of their new acquaintance Nimat. Cullen had seemed content enough to stay by his side, given the new budding relationship between the two of them - which Lavellan is still a little giddy over, to be honest - with one caveat: Mythal's orb, containing the fragment of her soul, was to be left behind.

It was a reasonable enough request, Lavellan had agreed; if Solas was planning to betray her, and somehow overpowered her, _and_ escaped from his magic-nullifying cuffs, he couldn't force her to hand over an orb she didn't have. And if he wasn't planning to betray her, well, the orb was likely safer in Cullen's possession anyway, far from _arlathvhen_ and any impending Evanuris.

So she'd taken Solas' phylactery, and left behind the orb and the key to the silverite shackles, and that was the end of that.

Now, though, standing in front of Deshanna's office door, she's questioning the wisdom of bringing the actual Dread Wolf to meet her sister.

"Nervous?" Solas asks lightly. 

Lavellan chooses not to dignify that with an answer, and knocks before letting herself in.

"Athima!" Deshanna declares happily, standing to greet her.

Deshanna and Athima Lavellan share surprisingly little familial resemblance; they have the same wide, dark eyes and abundant freckles, but beyond that the similarities stop. Deshanna takes after their mother, elegantly curved and effortlessly beautiful, her long blonde hair braided back from a smiling, heart-shaped face. Her vallaslin are etched in dark blue ink, stark against her fair skin - Falon'Din's tree, the mark of a Keeper or Keeper's First. Athima, by contrast, has their father's darker complexion and long, gangly limbs; she had often been mistaken for a boy in her youth, and she's sure she isn't helping matters now with her short, uneven haircut. 

"I wasn't expecting you until later this week," Deshanna says, "not that it's an issue, of course - we've plenty of space here - only the festivities don't properly begin for a few days, and I assumed you'd be late, you always are."

Lavellan isn't offended; it's true. She also doesn't have the heart to tell her sister that she hadn't been planning on attending _arlathvhen_ at all, until the world started ending. Again. 

"Aren't you going to introduce your guest?" Deshanna asks.

 _Might as well get it over with,_ Lavellan thinks. "This is Solas," she says on a sigh. "Solas, my older sister - Keeper Deshanna Isthimatoriel Lavellan."

"A pleasure to meet you," Solas says.

Deshanna looks from Solas to Lavellan, and back to Solas again. "Right," she says, unfazed, "We've got some catching up to do, haven't we? I'll put on some tea."

She bustles off to a corner of the room to light a small brazier, and Solas frowns. "I thought you said she knew...?"

"She knows," Lavellan tells him. "That's just Deshanna for you."

Over tea, Lavellan fills her sister in on the goings-on since she captured Solas at Skyhold. It's hard to believe it's been less than three weeks; so much has happened that it feels like a lifetime. Solas gamely sips at his tea without so much as a grimace despite his distaste for the stuff. Lavellan supposes that's his attempt at being polite.

Deshanna scarcely interrupts or comments, save to ask a clarifying question here or there. By the time Lavellan has finished her tale, her sister has drained four cups of her favorite embrium tea and had to start a second pot.

"Had I known that I was setting you up for all this," Deshanna says, "I might have thought twice about sending you to the humans' Conclave." Lavellan's sister has never liked the word 'shemlen;' she reasons that it's no better than 'knife-ear' or 'rabbit.'

"And trust Scout Hartha or Scout Taros with the task of killing Corypheus?" Lavellan asks. "Perish the thought."

Deshanna rolls her teacup between her hands. "Still," she says, "you've always been one to take on other people's burdens as your own. I can see how it wears on you, even now. If I could have spared you that weight..."

Lavellan looks away uncomfortably, conscious of her sister's gaze on her. "I'm alright, Desh," she says. 

"Mmm-hmm," Deshanna says noncommittally, but lets it stand.

"Anyway," Lavellan says, clearing her throat, "we've no idea how the Evanuris plan on attacking, or when. We know they got their hands on Hawke at some point, and he says they're coming to _arlathvhen,_ so... here we are."

"Silly of me to think you were coming for the festivities," Deshana laments. "I should know you never show up in person unless there's something hopelessly dire going on."

Lavellan sticks her tongue out at her sister, like the grown woman she is.

Deshanna sets her teacup down and reaches for a quill. "I'll ensure the camp patrols and sentries are bolstered, and I can request the city guard's aid, but most of them are human, of course - so the most they'd be allowed is to strengthen Wycome itself, but that couldn't hurt."

"That would help," Lavellan says, "if we were expecting a normal military attack."

Deshanna raises her eyebrows. "And how, exactly, are we to defend against an invasion from the Fade?"

"I may have some ideas, in that regard," Solas says.

Lavellan had nearly forgotten he was there, he'd been so quiet.

Deshanna has an excellent face for authority; she's always been able to somehow convey the sternest disapproval through her expression without even needing to frown. Lavellan has seen seasoned veterans and schooled diplomats alike quail under the stare Deshanna turns on Solas now. He doesn't flinch.

"I understand," Deshanna says, the tone of her voice even and unchanged, "that you are not the Dread Wolf as we Dalish have always depicted him, and that much of our history as we believed it is nothing more than fanciful legend. But I confess, it's strange to be sitting in my office having tea with the notorious Fen'harel."

Solas opens his mouth to respond, but Deshanna cuts him off. "However," she says, "even if I ignore everything you've done to my sister in the past seven years - and mind you, I only skip over it because the two of you seem to be on better terms now, and I respect that -"

Lavellan rolls her eyes.

"-even barring that, it is also my understanding that you are the one responsible for the countless Dalish abandoning their clans for the last five years, chasing promises of glory," Deshanna continues, "and all you've brought them is destruction and ruin. Tell me, then, Dread Wolf, why should I accept any advice you have to offer, given your penchant for deceit and manipulation?" 

Solas' face is expressionless. "If the Dalish are abandoning their traditions," he says, "it is not because I deceived them. I offer only truth, and free will; indeed, that is all I have ever wanted for the People." He spreads his hands placatingly. "Or should I cling to the knowledge I possess, keeping it from those who deserve to know the truth?"

"Our people need the truth, yes, but they also need each other," Deshanna argues. "Fracturing what unity the Dalish still have is not the answer."

Lavellan groans. "Can we not do this?" she interjects. "Arguing amongst ourselves solves nothing. Right now, we need to protect our people from the Evanuris. Can't we all agree on that?"

"You may trust him, even now, but I will not," Deshanna says.

"I trust him to help us against the Evanuris," Lavellan says. "No more." She spares Solas a brief glance; if she's offended him, he gives no sign of it. "And when it comes to knowledge about the Fade, there's no one better."

Solas nods but has the grace to remain quiet.

"If he says he has a way to protect against the Evanuris, I believe him," Lavellan continues. "But neither of us can do that without your help, Deshanna. You know the Keepers, you know the clans. They'll listen to you. And you're respected by the humans as well; there's no other Keeper or clan who can claim as much." 

Lavellan reaches out across Deshanna's desk and takes her sister's hand. "I'm not asking you to trust Solas," she says. "I am asking you to trust me."

Deshanna lets out an exasperated breath. "Creators," she says, "I don't know how I'm supposed to refuse you anything, when you give me those big puppy eyes. Small wonder you had the Orlesians wrapped around your little finger."

"Orlesian nobles are slightly more resilient to the puppy eyes," Lavellan tells her. "But only slightly."

"What would this plan of yours entail?" Deshanna asks Solas grudgingly.

"It is not so much a plan as a precaution," Solas says. "There are artifacts we have encountered on our travels which strengthen the Veil around them; with some careful placement, they might prevent anything, Evanuris or otherwise, from breaking through the Veil near the camps. More than that, I cannot promise; we do not know when or from where the Evanuris will strike."

"I've seen these artifacts," Lavellan says, remembering. "We used them to prevent more rifts from opening, after the Breach."

"They would have to be deactivated before we moved them," Solas says, "but reactivating them is simple enough. It does not even require a mage."

"And we can use the eluvians to retrieve them," Lavellan agrees.

Deshanna nods. "Alright," she says, "as long as you vouch for their use, I will see these artifacts distributed among the camps before _arlathvhen_ begins in earnest. And, if you don't mind, I'd like you to speak at _hahren'al._ "

The _hahren'al_ is a meeting of the elders of each clan, for the purposes of exchanging news and trading information. All the Keepers and their Firsts attend, as well as the _hahrens_ and any elder members of the clans. Lavellan is none of those things. "I wasn't aware I was invited," she says.

"Spreading the news of the Evanuris to all the Dalish would only cause unnecessary panic," Deshanna says, "but the Keepers should be warned. If you tell them what you've told me, they can ensure their clans are defended without being questioned."

"Alright," Lavellan says, "but I'm not sitting through all the trade negotiations."

Deshanna laughs. "I won't make you." She jots down another note. "You'll be attending _himasanal,_ I assume?"

Lavellan chokes on her tea. "No," she says.

Deshanna puts her quill down. "You're twenty-eight. It's long past time you found a bond-mate."

"I am _not_ going to the _sex party,_ " Lavellan hisses.

Solas coughs. "Excuse me," he says, "I'll just step outside for a moment."

Both sisters ignore him leaving. "It is not a 'sex party,' Athima," Deshanna says calmly, "what are you, a child? It's merely a place for unbonded elves to meet other unbonded elves. It's not as if the Dalish can just keep intermarrying within our clans. And it will be good for you to meet other eligible elves."

"I don't want to meet other eligible elves," Lavellan argues.

"It's not as if there's any pressure to bond immediately," Deshanna says. "You're a busy woman, of course, and no one expects you to give all that up, but you deserve to be happy." She puts up a hand at Lavellan's protest. "No, you can't tell me you're already happy, we both know what a lie that would be."

"I'm not - unhappy," Lavellan maintains, but Deshanna rolls her eyes.

"You don't even have to look for a bondmate," Deshanna tells her. "Just - at least humor me, and go, and make some friends. You don't have any Dalish friends anymore. And no, your Inquisition agents don't count," she says before Lavellan can argue.

"I don't even know anyone who's going," Lavellan says.

"That," Deshanna says, "is the point."

Lavellan scowls. "You're still unbonded, too," she points out. "And you're not going."

"I am a Keeper," Deshanna reminds her, "and my first priority must be our clan."

"Well, my first priority is stopping the Evanuris," Lavellan says.

Deshanna raises her eyebrows. "Tell me," she says sternly, "are you so resistant to attending the bonding-fire because you really are too busy, or because you're still in love with Ser Fen'harel out there?"

An unpleasant knot forms in Lavellan's stomach. "It's not... like that," she says.

Deshanna's face softens. "Isn't it?"

"I - " Lavellan begins, and has to stop to swallow the lump in her throat. "I can't - trust him, Desh, I don't know what he wants, what he's after, but I - I've tried moving on, and it isn't..."

"I know," Deshanna says quietly.

"I still love him," Lavellan admits, miserably. "I don't want to, but I do. And I know he still... I mean, he's said as much, but so much has changed between us. There's so much in the way, not least of which is the entire fate of the entire fucking world, and I can't... I can't do that, again. So we're just... stuck, at this impasse, and it feels impossible." She rubs her hand over her face; she's done enough crying over this man. "And I want more, but I can't help feeling like I shouldn't. So here I am. Just... stuck."

She closes her eyes. "Even if I could move on, it's an awful lot of baggage for any bondmate to put up with," she says, trying for a flippant tone and failing utterly.

"That's not true," Deshanna says. "You're not damaged goods, Athima."

Lavellan doesn't answer.

"I think you should go," Deshanna tells her matter-of-factly, "to _himasanal._ Even if it technically is for people to find bond-mates, most elves your age don't even go with that in mind. Most of them are just looking for friends, and a fair amount of them have just as much so-called baggage as you do." 

She refills Lavellan's teacup, nudging her until she drinks. The embrium brew is soothing against the tightness in Lavellan's throat.

"At the very least, you can babysit Mavros," Deshanna says, smiling.

"Who's that?" Lavellan asks.

"My new First," Deshanna answers. "He came to us from Clan Jilani. He's... a handful."

"Wonderful," Lavellan says.

"I think you'll like him," Deshanna says. "He can be brash, but he has a good heart." She tilts her head, considering. "I suppose that would make him a good match for you," she says, grinning, and Lavellan smacks her hand.

"You're terrible," she says.

"It runs in the family," Deshanna agrees, and drains her teacup.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You look beautiful," Solas says quietly as they follow a few paces behind Deshanna.
> 
> Lavellan looks up, startled; the high collar of her tunic suddenly feels too warm. "Thank you," she says automatically. "You, er." She cuts herself off before she can say anything stupid, like how the cut of his shirt fits his broad shoulders perfectly, or how elegant his hands - _nope, nope,_ she thinks, _not going there._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hello there! As I've told [Trish](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz), I've been meaning to jump back on the bandwagon of writing more, so I'm going to try - _try_ , mind you - to start updating weekly. We'll see how long that lasts before I spiral out of practice again...

Lavellan scowls at her reflection in the mirror on Deshanna's parlor wall.

She's never been the kind of person to put great stock in her personal appearance, much to Josephine and Vivienne's chagrin. Her tastes in fashion lean towards the practical rather than the extravagant, and the closest she ever gets to couture is the red Inquisition uniform she'd worn on formal occasions such as the Exalted Council. 

She's hardly entitled to the uniform anymore, now that she's given up her office, but _hahren'al_ is the most formal occasion that the Dalish have. Even if she's no longer the Inquisitor, Lavellan still has to look like she knows what she's talking about, walking into a meeting of distinguished Dalish elders and Keepers. 

She doesn't own anything even remotely resembling Dalish fashion anymore, but Deshanna has loaned her a lovely hunter-green tunic, silk spun as fine and soft as a whisper. Delicate silver embroidery lines the hems, its patterns reminiscent of fallen leaves. The sleeves are long and the collar is high, to conceal her prosthetic and harness, but Lavellan is longer-legged than Deshanna; the hem strikes just above her knee, but the wide slits of the tunic reveal far more of her bare thigh than she's comfortable with. The butter-soft nugskin gloves and legwraps are her own, and fit considerably better. Cole's amulet and Solas' jawbone pendant get tucked securely beneath the tunic, and in lieu of any visible jewelry, Deshanna has pinned a dozen tiny white flowers into Lavellan's short, dark hair.

The outfit is a bit shabby, by snooty Orlesian standards, but dazzling compared to everyday Dalish fashion. Still, it's not the outfit Lavellan's concerned with.

Lavellan has long since gotten used to the sight of her bare face in the mirror, free of vallaslin. When Solas had first removed them, she'd spent months adapting to the strange, wide expanse of her skin without the curving scrollwork of Ghilan'nain's mark. At the time, her feelings on the subject had been conflicted, given that Solas had just broken her heart without so much as a simple explanation. When the Inquisition had transitioned into Cassandra's honor guard, though, she'd been grateful for their absence; it was one less thing in the way of becoming accepted into the Orlesian nobility.

Now, though, her bare face will mark her as an outsider among the Dalish, and she's... apprehensive, to say the least - especially given that she's spent the last seven years immersed in human culture rather than keeping the customs of her own people.

_You are not here to fit in,_ she reminds herself. _You are here to save your people._

"Have you thought about what you're going to say?" Deshanna asks. She is resplendent in her formal Keeper regalia, her long blonde hair coiled at the nape of her neck and her ironbark staff in hand. Lavellan isn't technically permitted weapons at _hahren'al,_ but she has two small throwing knives tucked into her left glove and a longer knife strapped to her back, under her breastband. 

"Not really," Lavellan admits, a little sheepish. "I usually let Cullen give all the inspiring speeches."

"You never gave a speech in the entire seven years you were Inquisitor," Deshanna says dubiously.

"Not really," Lavellan replies.

"Not even at the Exalted Council?"

Lavellan grimaces. "That was different."

Deshanna's lips purse in disapproval. "Don't tell me you're taking this lightly, little sister," she says.

"I'm not taking it lightly," Lavellan protests, "it's just..."

"She's a better speaker when it comes from her heart," says Solas from the doorway, giving Lavellan a start; she's a difficult person to sneak up on, in general, but Solas seems to have the knack of it regardless.

Solas hasn't done much to dress up for the evening. He's exchanged his habitual long-sleeved tunic for another of the same color, albeit one of finer fabric, over the same green leggings Lavellan is used to seeing him wear. He's added a pair of dark leather gloves to cover the silverite cuffs, and he wears regular boots rather than footwraps. He doesn't look even the slightest bit Dalish, though clothing wouldn't have gone far to change that.

Lavellan doesn't miss how his eyes drop briefly to her bare thighs before darting back up.

"Yes, well," she says evenly, "these things tend to be sprung on me without warning. It's rare I have the chance to prepare."

"You'd best decide quickly," Deshanna says, gesturing to her front door. "We're meeting Mavros at the city's gates at dusk, so we ought to get moving."

Wycome is a port city, like Kirkwall, and smells of sea air and the spices that grow in the surrounding fields. Few passersby pay them any attention as Deshanna leads them towards the city's edge; Lavellan supposes well-dressed elves are more common here than anywhere else in Thedas. Perhaps someday, she thinks, Wycome will become the standard, rather than a rarity.

"You look beautiful," Solas says quietly as they follow a few paces behind Deshanna.

Lavellan looks up, startled; the high collar of her tunic suddenly feels too warm. "Thank you," she says automatically. "You, er." She cuts herself off before she can say anything stupid, like how the cut of his shirt fits his broad shoulders perfectly, or how elegant his hands - _nope, nope,_ she thinks, _not going there._

If Deshanna hears the awkward exchange, she makes no indication of it. The three of them walk in silence for a few more minutes before Solas speaks up again.

"I am aware," he begins, "that it would be extremely foolish to presume to ask anything of you, circumstances being what they are."

The silverite cuffs don't need to be in sight for her to know what he means. "Something on your mind?" she asks.

"Perhaps," he says. "You may not have given your address to the elders much thought, but I have. And I find myself wondering what you plan to tell them of... Fen'harel."

_'Fen'harel,' he says,_ Lavellan realizes. _Not 'me.'_ The streets of Wycome are crowded with humans and elves alike, and she can understand not wanting to casually refer to himself as the Dread Wolf where just anyone can hear. "What are you asking me, Solas?"

"The threat of the Evanuris cannot be understated," Solas tells her, as if she needs the reminder. "To gain the elders' trust, the truth will be the greatest tool you have. However, Fen'harel..."

"Fen'harel isn't one of the Evanuris," Lavellan says, when he doesn't continue. "Not truly."

"No," Solas says. He sounds almost relieved. "And I would be... grateful, if perhaps his secret could be kept a little while longer."

Deshanna is listening now; Lavellan can tell by the barely-noticeable tilt of her head, though her sister stays silent.

"The time will come for Fen'harel to reveal himself to the People," Solas says. "Sooner rather than later, I should think, but I - he," he corrects himself, "wouldn't want it to be like this."

_Like this,_ she thinks. Cuffed and silenced, bound to the will of another like the slaves he once risked empires to liberate. _Like this_ \- a shadow of the powerful figure he once was, the Rebel God. _Like this_ \- humbled, where Pride should stand tall.

"Athima," he says quietly. "I would not ask, had I any other choice."

Solas has called her by her given name only once before, in the final hours before his execution, when he truly believed he had been about to die. His use of it now leaves her feeling curiously vulnerable, and maybe he knows it - does it intentionally, now, to strip her of her defenses, but for once, she's surprisingly not conflicted.

"I don't see why Fen'harel's identity would be relevant," she says carefully, "when it's the Evanuris in the Fade that are the more pressing issue. And should the source of our information come into question, it would be accurate enough to insinuate that we came by it from one of the Dread Wolf's agents. I hear they're everywhere these days."

"That is true," Solas agrees, and the broad line of his shoulders relaxes ever so slightly.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Deshanna asks, without turning to look at either of them.

Lavellan chews her lip. "I wouldn't be comfortable lying to our people. But this is... less a lie, I think, than a guarded omission of the truth. Or do you think the alternative would be wiser?" she challenges. "I hardly think the rest of the clans are as hard to unsettle as you."

"No," Deshanna says grudgingly. "In this particular case, I agree that discretion would certainly be prudent. But tread softly, little sister; _tel'ghilana Fen'Harel._ "

_Let not the Dread Wolf guide you._

"There's no need to mother me, _hahren,_ " Lavellan says coolly.

Ahead of them, near the city gates, a commotion has broken out around a vendor's display; two elven boys, neither older than nine or ten, have apparently done something to anger the glass merchant who owns the stall. As the three of them approach, Lavellan can see the damage; hundreds of shards of glass litter the ground around the display, glittering like fallen snow.

"-worth more than both your lives," the merchant is saying; his face is nearly purple with rage.  
"He just wanted to _see,_ " insists the older of the boys, "he didn't mean to, he can't control it yet."

The younger of the boys is crying, the sort of panicked, hiccuping sob that only terrified children make. Even from this distance, still twenty or so feet away, Lavellan can feel the warped, hair-raising sensation of raw magic lingering in the air.

The glass vendor grabs the younger boy harshly by the arm, and Lavellan is moving before she's even thought about it, shouldering her way through the gathering crowd. "I'll show him how to control it," the man threatens, and his other hand flies back to strike the boy.

"Stop!" Lavellan shouts; she isn't close enough yet to intercede, but someone else gets there first. Another elf around Lavellan's age or younger catches the merchant by the wrist almost casually, as if it's the sort of thing he does every day. "Careful, now," says the man. His voice is smooth, honeyed. "We wouldn't want to go losing our temper, now, would we? Especially not over such a trifling matter as this."

"Trifling -" the merchant starts, but before he can finish, the young man gives a flourishing gesture with his free hand; all at once, the shattered fragments of the merchant's stock rise into the air, flying together into their original forms as if they'd never been broken in the first place.

It's an obvious display of magic, one that even the permit-carrying mages in Val Royeaux wouldn't dare in public. The man makes it seem so casual and effortless that Lavellan's sure her surprise is showing on her face, not to mention the shocked expressions of the crowd around them. 

"There," says the mage, "good as new."

The vendor is speechless, and the two boys take advantage of his surprise to flee. Lavellan catches each firmly, but gently, by the shoulder. "Wait," she says. "It's alright, I won't hurt you."

"Showing off again, are we, Mavros?" Deshanna says, the crowd parting for her approach.

"Councilor Istimaethoriel," the glass merchant says, still thrown. 

"Messere Halsin, isn't it?" Deshanna asks, though it's clear she already knows the answer. She bends over the newly-restored glass figurines, examining them. "These are lovely pieces," she says. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they were Messere Folchart's designs, wouldn't you? Which I find interesting, considering you claimed to have no knowledge of his stolen works when you were investigated by the Artisan's Guild only last week."

The merchant pales. "Er... I didn't mean... that is..."

"I've no time for your excuses," Deshanna says. "Make no mistake, Messere Halsin, I'll be speaking with the Guildmaster by the end of this week. Perhaps you'd better close up shop for the day, no?"

"Of course, Councilor," the merchant says, and goes about doing just that.

"Keeper," the mage - Mavros - says, grinning sheepishly.

Deshanna puts a hand up to silence him, turning instead to the two boys. She squats to put herself on their level. "What are your names?" she asks gently.

The younger of the two is still sobbing, now clutching onto Lavellan's leg like a lifeline. It's the older who answers. "I'm called Finnie," he says, "and he's Toby."

"You're very brave, Finnie," Deshanna says, "standing up for Toby like that. Are you brothers?"

Finnie nods.

"Is this the first time something like this has happened, Finnie?" she asks.

Finnie hesitates, but shakes his head. "He didn't mean it, though," he says.

"I know," Deshanna says, "but for both of your sakes, he should be taught how to control his magic, not let it control him. Why don't you tell me where you live, Finnie, and I'll have one of my good friends visit to start giving Toby lessons, alright?"

Lavellan peers at her sister's First as Deshanna collects information from the boys. Mavros is tall, for an elf, though not as tall as Solas, of course; he wears his brown hair long, past his shoulders, a few braids woven in here and there. His face is all narrow lines and sharp angles, Dirthamen's _vallaslin_ accentuating his high cheekbones. He's dressed in what seem to be ordinary Keeper robes, in a deep midnight blue that perfectly matches his eyes.

He is, as Dorian might say, _devastatingly_ handsome.

Not that Lavellan notices.

"So I suppose you must be Lady Athima, then," Mavros says, offering his hand. "Mavros Sharia Jilani, First of Clan Lavellan."

Lavellan grimaces at 'Lady,' but shakes his hand. "I've never seen magic like that," she admits. "Did my sister teach it to you?"

Mavros laughs; even his voice is pretty, Lavellan notes. Doesn't note. "Hardly," he says. "I was a member of a human Circle of Magi, when I was younger. When the Circles fell, I found my clan again, though I've recently been assigned to Keeper Istimaethorial and Clan Lavellan."

"Such flagrant feats of magic may be inadvisable, even here," Solas says, coming to stand at Lavellan's side. His posture is impeccable, his hands clasped behind his back. "Even now."

"You're probably right," Mavros admits. "I'm sure I'll hear it from the Keeper later." He pauses; when Solas doesn't introduce himself, he prompts, "and you are?"

"Solas," he says simply, and doesn't take the proffered hand.

Lavellan resists the urge to roll her eyes.

"Well then," Deshanna says, rejoining them as the two elven boys run off to wherever she's sent them. "Mavros, don't think you're going to avoid a conversation with me later, when we've seen our guests to bed," she says archly. "But for now, we ought to be on our way. _Hahren'al_ awaits."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A side note on Dalish names: we of course have no idea how Dalish naming conventions work, but for the purposes of this fic I'm going with a three-name system. A Dalish elf's first name is their personal, private name, used by family members or close friends. Their second name is their name for more formal occasions, and their last name is the clan they were born into. So someone like Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan is Deshanna to her sister, but Istimaethoriel to her clan and to the city council. 
> 
> Of course, the silly humans in Orlais don't understand that Athima Serannas Lavellan should have been called Inquisitor Serannas, using her clan name instead. And it stuck. Also, it's a bit presumptive of Mavros to call her 'Lady Athima,' rather than 'Lady Serannas'...
> 
> Anyway, if you want to yell at me for butchering Dalish culture, I'm on [Tumblr](http://mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So much has been lost," Solas says. "I saw an empire rise and fall, and wonders such as the world has never since seen. And yet this tiny thing, this trifling memory of the lowest point of the Dales? This is what survives?"
> 
> "This is all our people have left," Lavellan whispers back. "So much has been lost, as you've said. Shouldn't we be grateful for everything we have regained? No matter how 'trifling' it is?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should be making Christmas presents but hey, I've still got nine days... ehehehehe
> 
> This chapter once again encouraged and proofread by [Trish](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz), without whom I would have no one to send Dragon Age memes to.

_Hahren'al_ is... not what Lavellan expected.

Fifty-six Dalish elves occupy the enormous clearing Deshanna had selected for the _hahren'al_ , including the Lavellan sisters, Solas, and Mavros. Four of Solas' elven artifacts cast a greenish glow across the trees, one at each cardinal point of the clearing. A wide bonfire illuminates the faces of those present, representatives of the fourteen Dalish clans across Thedas. Some of them, Lavellan recognizes: Hawen, Emalien, and Ithiren, who she'd met in the Exalted Plains during the Inquisition's rise; Neria, the First of Clan Ralaferin, who has been working closely with Leliana's agents for years now; and Mihris, who Lavellan and Solas had met in the Hinterlands, and is now Keeper of Clan Sabrae.

Most, Lavellan knows only by reputation: the sun-bronzed, weathered sailors of the seafaring Clan Mathalin; the fierce warriors and protectors of Clan Vaharel, who still call Arlathan Forest their home; and most shockingly, the four representatives of Clan Ghilain, descended from Inquisitor Ameridan himself, whose faces are bare of vallaslin and whose arrival is accompanied by whispers and stares.

Lavellan raises her eyebrows at Solas. He does not quite suppress a smirk.

Each of the Keepers take their place, with the other representatives of their clans, in a circle around the bonfire. Deshanna welcomes them all with the customary ritual opening - a prayer to Mythal, rejoicing in the reunion of the Dalish clans. Lavellan shifts uneasily and does not recite the words, though she knows them by heart, like all Dalish. It feels wrong to pray to a dead goddess who she knows now was no goddess, and who abandoned her people like all the rest.

She steals a glance at her companions; Deshanna and Mavros stand with arms outstretched, palms and faces turned skyward, like most of the Dalish in the clearing. Solas, however, has one hand raised to his chest, fingers closed around the place where his jawbone pendant used to hang.

Lavellan thinks of that same pendant around her own neck, and wonders just what it means to the Dread Wolf.

After Mythal's benediction, Deshanna leads the Keepers in remembering those elves who have died since the last _arlathvhen_ ; it is a Keeper's duty to remember these names, and honor their passing. The list continues around the circle until it reaches a gap between the Keepers of Clan Jilani and Clan Ralaferin, where Clan Virnehn used to stand. The clan had been slaughtered by the demon Imshael during the Orlesian Civil War; in place of their keeper, Mihris steps forward - the only survivor of the massacre - and recites the names of every Dalish lost, grief etched in every line of her face.

"We are the last elvhen," Deshanna says gravely, when the last name has been spoken.

"Never again shall we submit," Lavellan says in unison with the rest of those gathered.

The next few hours are a droning blur of clan reports, migration patterns, trade agreements and cultural observations. Lavellan drifts in and out of focus, only snapping to attention the few times she hears her name mentioned; her travels as Inquisitor had seen her crossing paths with a few of the clans here and there.

Hawen, in particular, makes quite the impression with his presentation of the account of Red Crossing that Lavellan had found in Din'an Hanin; it's been so long that Lavellan had nearly forgotten about it, but the discovery of a lost piece of Dalish history is always an exceptional achievement among the clans. 

Solas makes a vague noise of disapproval; Lavellan glances at him questioningly.

"So much has been lost," Solas says, softly so as not to interrupt Hawen's excited commentary on the Emerald Knights and what the account from Din'an Hanin has revealed. "I saw an empire rise and fall, and wonders such as the world has never since seen. And yet this tiny thing, this trifling memory of the lowest point of the Dales? This is what survives?"

"This is all our people have left," Lavellan whispers back. "So much has been lost, as you've said. Shouldn't we be grateful for everything we have regained? No matter how 'trifling' it is?"

Solas' lips draw into a thin line, though he keeps his gaze carefully on Keeper Hawen.

"I know you don't think of the Dalish as your people," Lavellan continues quietly. "But considering they're all that's _left_ of your people - after what _you_ did to them - you may want to rethink your stance." 

She reaches across the few inches between them and closes her hand around his wrist, fingers curling into the leather of his glove to press against unyielding silverite beneath. "You want to bring back the glory of the elvhen? This is where it starts. Not destroying the world to bring about a new one, not anything as big or terrifying as that. You start small. One person, one clan at a time. This is how we regain our people."

"Our people?" Solas murmurs.

"The Dalish," Lavellan says, "and the city elves, too. All of the elvhen. _Our_ people."

_I don't hold the Dalish up as perfect, _she had told him once, _but we have something worth honoring. A memory of the ancient ways.___

__This, she thinks, is the fundamental difference between her and Solas, the one thing that if only she could convince him, it might be the means to change his heart: that his people are not gone, not dead. They are changed, perhaps, or transformed, but not gone. They exist in the Dalish, and in the city elves as well; even if they _have_ gotten so much of their history wrong, the spirit of Elvhenan remains, if only Solas could see it._ _

__For all that they have their insurmountable differences, Lavellan understands Solas better than he thinks; she knows it is the guilt he carries over Elvhenan, over Mythal, that drives him to seek the end of Lavellan's own world. It is a burden carried over countless millenia, a burden that set him on the _din'anshiral,_ and she wonders if he knows who he would be without it._ _

__It is not so different than the burden she carries herself - the burden the Anchor left not just on her flesh but on her soul. Are any of them, she wonders, capable of freeing themselves from the wounds of their past, which shaped who they are today?_ _

__It isn't until Solas nudges her with his elbow that Lavellan realizes she's been so lost in thought that she's missed Deshanna introducing her, and the entirety of the _hahren'al_ is looking at her expectantly._ _

__"Sorry," she says automatically, face heating, and steps hastily forward._ _

__She clears her throat. "Many of you know me already, by reputation if not personally. I am Athima Serannas Lavellan, and until recently I was the leader of the Inquisition, honor guard of Divine Victoria." She doesn't expect this information to be new to anyone, but it seems pertinent to say anyway. "Titles such as this mean little to our people, I know. But before I was the Inquisitor, I was just a scout of Clan Lavellan, no different than anyone else here."_ _

__"I grew up on tales of the Creators of old," Lavellan continues. "I honored the gods like all of you, in prayer and in ritual. I committed myself to Andruil's teachings, the Vir Tanadhal. I took Ghilan'nain's vallaslin in honor of a halla that once saved my life. I prayed for protection from the Dread Wolf, and in wrongdoing I begged Mythal for forgiveness. And as the Creators bid, I followed the commands of my Keeper, and when she ordered me to attend the humans' Conclave, I did not question. I did as I was asked."_ _

__She gestures at the sky. "And then came the Breach. No one was free of its ruin - Dalish or otherwise. I risked everything to close it, and travelled all over Thedas closing the Rifts. And in many places I found what few of our kind ever have the fortune to find: ruined temples, ancient writings, impossible magic. Relics of our people, from a time long before the Dales - from Elvhenan."_ _

__A few scattered murmurs accompany this revelation; Lavellan presses on. "What I found was... curious, at the time, as much of it conflicted with the things I had learned. Not entirely surprising, given what our people have lost," she amends. "But still, I wondered just how much of our history has become warped over time."_ _

__"Some of you have seen these things as well," she continues. "Statues of Fen'harel in shrines to Mythal, though we have been taught that the Creators shunned him. Accounts from spirits that remember Elvhenan, and speak of tyrants and war and slavery. Evidence that would suggest that the kingdom of our ancestors was not the paradise we envision."_ _

__She glances around the clearing; the barefaced representatives of Clan Ghilain are nodding in agreement, along with those from Clan Jilani, who frequently make their camps in the Arbor Wilds, and no doubt have encountered Abelas' sentinels._ _

__"It took an invasion of Qunari forces at the Exalted Council for me to learn the truth," Lavellan says, "and it was not a truth I relished learning. I believed the Creators to be legend, incorporeal. Benevolent, though fierce. But I was wrong. We were all wrong. They were known as the Evanuris, and they ruled over Elvhenan with magic so powerful the world has never since seen its like. They marked their followers with their symbols - the vallaslin - and branded their slaves as well, to show who they belonged to."_ _

__Agitated whispers break out around the clearing. Lavellan presses on. "They were not gods," she says. "They were incredibly powerful mages, and they used their power to become tyrants. And when one of them - Mythal herself - stood against them, they killed her."_ _

__The uproar that follows is deafening._ _

__"Blatant hearsay!" shouts one Keeper._ _

__"Are we to believe this baseless fabrication?" demands another._ _

__"Have you been taking lessons from Varric?" Solas murmurs in Lavellan's ear. "You seem to have his flair for the dramatic."_ _

__She winces._ _

__Deshanna does her best to calm everyone down, and as the arguments die down Keeper Hawen's voice breaks through the din. "I doubt the former Inquisitor would claim such an outlandish thing," he says sensibly, "had she no evidence to support it."_ _

__"I have proof," Lavellan says. "Writings and relics from the Temple of Mythal, and firsthand accounts from her Sentinels. Documents from the Deep Roads that prove the presence of the Evanuris, who enslaved dwarves to mine lyrium for them. Not to mention the emergence of the agents of Fen'harel across Thedas. You have felt them in the young elves who have left your clans, and return barefaced, with stories of the Dread Wolf himself - should they return at all."_ _

__She looks at the Keeper of Clan Ghilain, who returns her gaze without flinching. "The tales Dalish children learn of Fen'harel, at least, are partially true. The Dread Wolf created the Fade as a prison for the Evanuris, and built the Veil to keep them there, asleep for all eternity. In doing so, he destroyed the empire of Elvhenan, built upon the raw magic of the world, and our people fell to Tevinter, to slavery, to mortality."_ _

__"If what you say is true," says Mihris, "and you have known this since the Exalted Council, then why wait five years to say anything? Why not approach the Keepers, and share what you learned?"_ _

__"She did," Deshanna says, coming to Lavellan's rescue. "As is customary, she told her Keeper everything. And I thought it best to keep this knowledge a secret, rather than risk uprooting our entire system of beliefs; it was far safer to our people to introduce the idea slowly, over time. But it is time which we no longer have."  
Lavellan nods. "The Evanuris no longer sleep soundly in their prison," she says. "They are awake, and they seek to regain what they have lost. They will find their way into our world again, and when they come they will not come peacefully."_ _

__"How?" Mihris demands. "When?"_ _

__"Soon," Lavellan says. "They already have what they need." She explains as best as she can about the dreams she had of Ghilan'nain and Andruil, and about finding Hawke in the Crossroads. When the Keepers ask about the eluvians, Lavellan tells them the half-truth that she and Solas agreed upon, and names him as the agent of Fen'harel that had 'defected' to their side._ _

__"We have taken precautions to protect the clans," Deshanna says. "The magical artifacts you have all seen placed around the camps are designed to strengthen the Veil, and prevent the Evanuris from breaking through here."_ _

__"If they are as strong as you say," says the Keeper of Clan Vaharel, "that will not hold them."_ _

__"No," Lavellan says. "They will find a way through, eventually, and they will come first for what remains of their people. They will come for us, and we must be ready to resist them."_ _

__"Why?" asks one of the hahrens from Clan Boranehn. "If these are truly the only remnants from Arlathan, should we not follow them? The restoration of the empire is all the Dalish have ever desired. These are our gods. Surely they will protect their people."_ _

__"They aren't gods," Lavellan says._ _

__"And we are not their people," says Keeper Lanaya, the barefaced leader of Clan Ghilain. "My clan have encountered these Sentinels, the survivors of Elvhenan. They believe their people to be dead. We are no better than _shemlen_ to them. They will enslave us, as they did the other races of their time, as we have always been enslaved." She looks fiercely around the clearing. "Never again shall we submit," she declares._ _

__"Never again," Deshanna agrees, voice ringing with authority. "We will not submit to these false gods, and we will not submit to the fate they have in store for us." She spreads her arms. "Brothers and sisters, _arlathvhen_ has not always been a time for joy and celebration among our people. In the early days of the Dalish, circumstances often demanded that _hahren'al_ be a war council, to organize the protection of the clans and the punishment of our enemies. As it would seem, those circumstances are upon us now."_ _

__Lavellan steps back into the circle as her sister steps forward. "Keepers," Deshanna says. "The time for war is upon us, and the agreement must be unanimous, as is our custom." She raises her staff high and plants its bladed base into the ground, leaving it standing upright. "Clan Lavellan prepares for war."_ _

__"Clan Sabrae prepares for war," Keeper Lanaya says immediately after, and plants her own staff._ _

__"Clan Ghilain prepares for war," Mihris says as well._ _

__Lavellan watches with trepidation as the remaining twelve Keepers all mirror Deshanna's motion, until fifteen staves are planted upright around the fire. Fifteen clans against nine Evanuris, with the entirety of their magical gifts and who-knows-what-else at their disposal._ _

__All Lavellan can do is hope that the small warning she has brought will be enough._ _

__"Brothers and sisters," Deshanna says. "The count is unanimous. Ready the clans for war."_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come argue with me about Dalish culture on [Tumblr](http://mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com)!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Keeper Istimaethoriel said you'd be out here somewhere, brooding," her sister's First says cheerfully. "And that I'm supposed to make sure you come to _himasanal_ , and I'm not to take no for an answer."
> 
> Lavellan grimaces.
> 
> Mavros smirks. "I thought you might make that face," he says, "which is why Deshanna _also_ said to tell you that your Messere Solas appears to be attending _himasanal_ as well, and you should, and I quote, 'stop dragging your feet and take what you want already.'"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If 2018's already kicking your ass clap your hands -clap clap-
> 
> Thanks as always to my darling [Trish](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz) for the proofread.

After _hahren'al_ , Lavellan finds she has no patience for the hordes of questions her people bombard her with.

She begs off with some excuse about the long journey - no one but Solas and Deshanna even know the eluvians exist, anyway - and finds a quiet spot among the trees, far from the Dalish camps. 

The Dalish have not been to war in living memory, and though she knows it's necessary she can't help but feel guilty for pitting them against an enemy that she can't see, can't predict. How many of her people will die, fighting a war she dragged them into?

Corypheus, at least, was an enemy she could understand. Even when she'd known him only as the Elder One, Lavellan had seen a clear goal: close the Breach, and find out what caused it. She'd had a trail to follow, and it had led her straight to her enemy, one she could see and fight and rally against. 

She doesn't know the Evanuris. She doesn't know their motivations or their power, because they exist in a place completely outside her realm of possibilities. All she has are a vague notion of their history, Solas' admittedly shaky prediction of their goals, and Hawke's cryptic warning that they'll appear here, at _arlathvhen_.

She did not fear Corypheus, even at Haven. She didn't fear his Venatori, or his demons, or his supposed immortality. 

But she fears the Evanuris.

When Lavellan and her sister were very young, Deshanna had suffered from terrible nightmares; Fade demons haunted her in her sleep, drawn to her magic. She used to crawl, shaking, into Athima's bedroll in the aravel they shared, and the two of them would pray to Mythal for guidance and protection until Deshanna fell back asleep.

Now, Lavellan knows better, but there is no one left to look to in her fear; no one left to pray to for protection. The gods are not gods, and they are not listening.

She thinks of Cullen, kneeling before the statue of Andraste in Skyhold's garden, reciting the Chant of Light. Of Cassandra, her faith like a battering ram, changing the Chantry by sheer force of will. Of Mother Giselle, who never wavered despite the chaos and division of her fellow clergy.

Andraste's herald, Lavellan was once called. She was never sure if she believed it.

_Andraste, Bride of the Maker,_ she thinks, _if it's true what your followers say about you, then perhaps you'll hear even me, even now._

"What are you doing out here looking so glum?"

Lavellan flinches, whipping around. Sauntering towards her through the trees is Mavros, hands shoved in his pockets and staff strapped tightly to his back.

"Didn't mean to startle you," he says, grinning rakishly.

"That's alright," Lavellan says, feeling a bit caught out. "What are you doing out here?"

"Keeper Istimaethoriel said you'd be out here somewhere, brooding," her sister's First says cheerfully. "And that I'm supposed to make sure you come to _himasanal_ , and I'm not to take no for an answer."

Lavellan grimaces.

Mavros smirks. "I thought you might make that face," he says, "which is why Deshanna _also_ said to tell you that your Messere Solas appears to be attending _himasanal_ as well, and you should, and I quote, 'stop dragging your feet and take what you want already.'"

Lavellan's jaw drops. "She did _not_ say that," she says, affronted.

"She did," Mavros confirms.

"I'm going to kill her," Lavellan swears.

"Please don't," Mavros says amiably. "That would make me Keeper, and I'm far too young and irresponsible to be in charge of an entire clan."

Where _hahren'al_ had been an organized, almost ritualistic event, born of centuries of traditions and oral history, _himasanal_ is decidedly... not. Several bonfires are scattered here and there along the banks of the river, surrounded by what must be hundreds of Dalish elves, most around Lavellan's age but many older as well. Music drifts across the water, a lively tune played by a fiddle and flute, as well as some other stringed instrument - a mandolin, perhaps, or a lute. The smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat wafts downwind; Lavellan's mouth waters.

Despite Lavellan's earlier comment about a 'sex party,' the majority of the elves surrounding the fires are doing nothing more than chatting, eating, and occasionally dancing - though if she looks to the treeline, where the light from the fires doesn't quite reach, she can make out the shadows of couples moving among the woods.

By Orlesian standards, it is nothing short of savagery. Lavellan loves it.

She finds Solas sitting near where the musicians are playing; he shifts over on his bench to make room for her and offers her a bowl of something that smells vaguely spicy and fishy.

"What is this?" she asks, tasting it; it's so spicy it makes her eyes water.

Solas flashes her his rare smile. "I haven't the faintest idea," he admits. "Some sort of seafood from Clan Mathalin, I'd wager. Where did you go?"

"I... needed to think," she says, and Solas nods.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

Lavellan shrugs. "I don't know," she says honestly.

"I understand," Solas says, and they both fall silent, watching the musicians and dancers.

"I chose this spot because I recognized a tune," he says after a while, gesturing at the place they're sitting. "Just a fragment of one, from the days of Elvhenan. Such a small thing, and yet it has somehow outlasted the ages."

"That's incredible," Lavellan says.

"It was said, among the ancient elves, that music was the first magic," Solas tells her. "That in the air, the first elves heard a song, and learned to sing it for themselves; their melodies took form, and changed the world. Even now, there are mages who study magical resonance, and how it interacts with the natural vibration of the living world. In that way, I suppose all mages are composers of a sort, creating magic out of energy just like musicians create sounds from a plucked string."

Lavellan will be the first to admit that she doesn't have the slightest understanding of magical theory, but Solas' words remind her of hours spent in Skyhold's rotunda, listening to his tales of spirits and ruins and cultures in the Fade. The stories he told her, she knows now, were discovered as he slumbered for thousands of years - not learned by falling asleep in odd places like he once claimed. Still, she treasures the memories he chose to share with her, then and now.

"I missed you," she says.

Solas looks at her strangely.

"Even after I knew who you were," Lavellan tells him, "I was angry with you, and upset, and afraid, but mostly I just... missed you." She fidgets with the hem of her tunic. "I missed your stories. I missed watching you paint, and dragging you around looking for... I don't know, elfroot and things, and getting history lectures about some... old rocks in the Hinterlands, or something. I even missed the way you always fought with Sera and Vivienne over the stupidest things. I missed all of it. I wished we could go back to the way things were, when things were simple between us."

"Things were never simple between us," Solas says quietly. "Not for me."

"Why not?" Lavellan presses. "Why couldn't they be?"

Solas's brows narrow into a crease. "I suppose it would be more accurate to say... things were _too_ simple," he clarifies. "It was... terrifying, how easily you changed the world around you. It was even more terrifying to think that perhaps, you could all too easily change _me._ "

He meets her gaze, something open and honest and raw in his face. "If I distanced myself from you," he says, "it was not because I feared hurting you. You are... indomitable. Unflinching. It was absurd to think I could change you. If I feared anything, it was your influence over me. That this tiny, insignificant, mortal girl could become so dear to me that I would give _anything_ for you, should you ask it. If I hid myself from you, it was only so you would not know what to ask."

He looks away. "How easy it might have been, to watch the plans I had made for millenia come crashing down around me - if you knew. To turn away from it all, at no more than a word from you - if only you could see the truth. Can you blame me, for wanting to hide it from you?"

Lavellan's mouth is suddenly very dry. "No," she says.

"I did the only thing I could think to do," Solas continues. "I ran. I spent the better part of two years building myself back into the Dread Wolf, knowing that when I next saw you I must not falter. I had a purpose, and I could not let you change me, even if I wanted to. And here we are now, and it was all for nothing. You have changed me nonetheless."

"I don't understand," Lavellan says. "Solas, what are you saying?"

"I have been thinking," he tells her, "about what you said to me at _hahren'al_ , about what is left of my - of our people," he corrects himself. "And I have been wondering if... perhaps there is not some compromise, between your point of view and mine. I want to restore the glory of Elvhenan," he says, "and to do that, I must tear down the Veil. To that, there is no alternative. But perhaps... that does not have to mean the destruction of your world."

Lavellan's heart skips. "How?"

"The Veil is not a physical barrier," Solas says. "It is... an energy. If we spoke of music, I would say it is a dissonant chord, that dampens other notes. It is a manifestation of an enormous amount of energy - enough energy to destroy Elvhenan in the first place. That energy cannot simply be destroyed - it has to go somewhere. The ritual I devised to remove the Veil could direct that energy in one of two ways - either into the physical world, which would destroy all life here as you know it."

"Or?" Lavellan asks.

"Or," Solas says, "into the Fade, which would destroy all the spirits, all of the raw power of creation. It would destroy magic entirely."

"Oh," Lavellan says, eyes wide.

"Neither was a desirable outcome, of course," Solas says. "But for what I hoped to accomplish? Life, and culture, could be restored. Magic could not."

It is incredibly difficult to not be furious at Solas' casual suggestion that the destruction of her entire world would be the more 'desirable outcome.' Her emotions must show on her face, because Solas raises a hand to stop whatever she's about to say. "I know," he says. "I thought it the only path available to me. And I knew that if I let you talk me out of it, I might even agree with you. So I left, and resigned myself to the _din'anshiral_ I had built for myself, and I did not seek a compromise. I thought there could be no compromise. I thought I knew all there was to know about magic, and that was that."

He gestures at the joyful chaos of _himasanal_ around them. "And yet, there is so much I have yet to see of the new world," he says. "There are cultures I do not understand, and traditions I have not encountered. Is it so foolish to think that perhaps, there is also knowledge I don't possess? Magic I don't understand?"

"I don't think that's foolish at all," Lavellan says. 

"I don't know if it's possible, to bring down the Veil and still preserve both this world and the Fade," Solas says. "But I want to find out. I want to try." He takes her hand. "Will you help me, vhenan?"

"Of course I'll help you, all I've ever wanted was for you to let me help you," she says, and kisses him.

He is caught off guard, at first - he always is, when she kisses him, she thinks - but he recovers quickly, his arms coming up hard around her. Her hand catches in the soft, fine fabric of his shirt; one of his gloved hands dislodges flowers from her hair. His mouth opens against hers, soft and wet.

There are hundreds of her kin around them, who could be watching them right now, but this is _himasanal,_ and she does not care. The Orlesian courts would think this display bawdy and indecent, and she does not care. There are a thousand disasters looming on the horizon, not least of which are the Evanuris, and she does not care - she does not care, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can always yell at me for too much fluff and not enough plot on [Tumblr!](mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In almost seven thousand years of existence, Solas has never met anyone who can catch him off guard as thoroughly as Athima Lavellan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying my hand at Solas' point of view here; we'll see. 
> 
> If it weren't for [Trish](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz), these chapter updates would be unreadable sleep-deprived gibberish. This is why we proofread, folks!

In almost seven thousand years of existence, Solas has never met anyone who can catch him off guard as thoroughly as Athima Lavellan.

From the moment he had laid eyes on her, in the dark dungeons of Haven, she had been an anomaly to him - something that had upset the well-laid plans of centuries. He hadn't even known her name, then; had she not borne the Anchor, he may never have spared her a second glance, this unimportant child of the mortal, magic-less Dalish he had unwittingly created.

Still, somehow she'd wormed her way past his defenses. He'd found himself strangely charmed by her curiosity, her resilience, her bravery. It had become increasingly difficult to maintain his aloof, detached manner around her, and with every passing day he found himself revealing more and more of Solas, the man, whom he'd spent millennia burying beneath the mantle of the wolf.

He'd thought the truth would drive her away. She has seen the worst of him, now, down to his very core, and still she is here by his side. She makes him want to be a better man. She makes him _want_ to change.

And that, he thinks, is the most frightening thing about her.

"Of course I'll help you," she says, "all I've ever wanted was for you to let me help you -"

She tastes like embrium tea and curry spice, leftover from the bowl that's been discarded somewhere between them. Her hand clutches at his shirt; even through her glove it is a scorching weight over his heart. 

As always, when she kisses him, he finds himself unable to come up with a single reason why he should pull away; she has a way of dampening his more rational thought processes. He has been trying to respect the careful distance she's maintained between them since Val Royeaux, as increasingly difficult as that's become. What he'd told her during the Qunari invasion of Halamshiral had been true: he would not lie with her under false pretenses. 

But now, there is nothing between them - no lies, no agendas, no reason that he should not want her - and he _wants_ her so badly that it frightens him, has always frightened him.

She is flushed when they finally part. He glances at her mouth, red and swollen; he suppresses a smirk when he notices her doing the same to him. He leans in again to taste her, slower this time, drinking in the barely-audible whimper she makes when he tilts her head back, fingers in her hair. His other hand strays to her knee, tucked against his, the bare skin there a sight he's been staidly trying (failing) to avoid; the muscle there is strong beneath his palm, her skin warm from the fire.

He has lived a thousand lifetimes, each longer than the last. He has seen empires fall and kingdoms crumble. He has witnessed the birth of new eras, the splendor of kings, the endless expanse of the cosmos - all the miracles that mankind and magic have to offer - and she outshines them all; someday, on his deathbed, he will remember this night with her, a smile on her face and flowers in her hair.

"Solas," she gasps when they part for air. _Pride_ : his first name, his greatest virtue, his greatest flaw; _pride_ : his reaction to hearing his name in her mouth like that -

"Solas," she repeats, louder; "we are literally _surrounded by people._ "

She laughs as he hastily draws away - giggles, even, a sound he's rarely heard - and laces her fingers through his, tugging his hand towards her to plant a kiss on the back of his hand. He doesn't quite feel it, through the leather of his glove, but the gesture is sweet nonetheless.

A few of the Dalish around them have noticed their lack of decorum, but this is _himasanal_ , and none of her kin seem to care. "Perhaps," she says breathlessly, "you'd care to finish this conversation at a later date?"

Solas laughs. "Conversation?"

"Oh, hush," she tells him, grinning.

He can't resist leaning forward for one more kiss, on her forehead this time, and that's when he notices the one set of eyes watching them that hasn't glanced away.

"Athima," he says, low and quiet. "Arannia is here."

Leliana's trained her well; the former Inquisitor betrays no surprise in her posture or demeanor, nothing to give away that she's heard him. She tilts her head up, lips brushing against his jaw. "She's seen us?"

"Watching us," he says.

"We can't fight her here," she says.

"I'll draw her into the forest," Solas tells her. "Give me five minutes, then follow. Do not be seen."

He feels rather than sees her roll her eyes. "Please," she says, "who do you think I am, an amateur?"

She raises his hand to her lips again; something small but heavy slides into his glove, clicking against the shackle concealed there - one of her throwing knives. "Do I want to know how many of these you managed to hide on yourself?" he asks.

She raises her eyebrows at him in lieu of an answer.

"Five minutes," he repeats, then rises, stalking towards the trees without so much as a glance towards Arannia.

He does not believe for one moment that Arannia's presence here is a coincidence. Still, there is no possible way she might have tracked them here, as they'd travelled by eluvian. She'd somehow known they would be here; her spy network must still be active, despite his absence.

He finds a small clearing deep enough in the woods that the light from the bonfires is very faint, and waits, hands clasped behind his back. The knife - hardly a knife, really, more like a dart, weighted for throwing - presses against the heel of his hand. It will be small use against an Antivan assassin, should she realize his duplicity; he will have to make sure she does not expect it.

"Arannia," he says coolly as she approaches.

His former spymaster is young, in her late twenties or early thirties, perhaps; her dark hair is twisted into a neat bun at the back of her head. She would be beautiful, he supposes, if not for the wide, knotted scar slanting across her mouth, the result of a nobleman's sword that had split open her face during an alienage riot. Her eyes are sharp, though one is bruise-dark, a recent wound visible even against her dark skin. She's unarmored, like the other elves at _himasanal_ , though he would be a fool to think her also unarmed.

" _Señor_ Solas," Arannia says. "Enjoying the night?"

"Why are you here?" he asks.

Arannia sighs. "Right, right, no small talk, I remember," she says. "Except for your Herald, no? Looks to me like you've been doing a little more than talking."

"Arannia," Solas says, warningly.

"No, no, I understand," she continues. "See, here I was making plans to get you away from her, right? Looking for a way to get past her defenses, steal the orb she used to weaken you. Sending my little spiders to Val Royeaux, to Kirkwall. Only to find she isn't there. And now, here you both are, and you're sticking your tongue down her throat."

"What I do or do not -" he begins.

"So I'm thinking," Arannia cuts him off, pacing restlessly from one tree to another, "you're probably playing her, right? Looking for a weak spot. Making your own, if you have to. And trust me, I'd love to believe that. Only I don't think you're that good a liar, _Lobo Temible_. I think you're too _proud_ to lie like that. So I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me you're not still in love with her. That you haven't let her turn you."

Solas knows that Arannia considers her sharp Antivan tongue to be an asset, but he's never found it anything more than irksome.

"Let me remind you, before you continue, and say something you'll regret," Solas says, lifting his chin, "that I require neither your permission nor your approval for any decision I may make. My business is my own, and I would have thought that by now you understood that."

"I -" Arannia starts.

"In addition," he continues, and strides towards her, letting his height and posture force her to look up to speak to him, "if I have followed the Herald to _arlathvhen_ , it is because this is precisely where _I_ want to be."

"She _hanged_ you," Arannia protests. "She stripped your magic away. She's carrying a fucking phylactery made of your blood!"

"Which was made with my consent," he informs her.

Arannia shakes her head in disbelief. "Of course," she says. She reaches for a pouch on her belt and pulls something out with an over-dramatic sigh. "I suppose you won't be needing this, then?"

In the palm of her hand rests a small, innocuous silverite key, carved with a single rune that matches the ones on the cuffs around Solas' wrists.

"Where did you get that?" he demands.

"Where do you think?" Arannia answers, rolling her eyes. "I couldn't get the orb, if you're wondering. Barely escaped with this, after the big Fereldan caught me."

"I assume that's what happened to your face," Solas says, gesturing at her black eye.

She shrugs. "Your friend with the mustache is faster than he looks," she tells him. "And no, I didn't kill anyone, if that's what you're worried about. Though I don't know why you'd care."

She tosses him the key and he catches it by reflex, though he doesn't move to unlock the shackles.

"You shouldn't have done this, Arannia," Solas says grimly.

"Are you serious?" she huffs. "Everything I've done since Skyhold - where _you_ got captured, after insisting you didn't need my help, might I add - everything I've done has been to rescue your _culo estupido_ , and now you're telling me I shouldn't have? Why are you acting like I'm your enemy?!"

Solas' fist clenches tightly around the key. "Because you killed my friend," he says coldly.

Arannia's eyes narrow in confusion. "What?"

There is movement in the trees behind her; Solas doesn't glance towards it. "Compassion," he tells her.

"The demon?" Arannia asks, incredulous.

He presses his lips together. "Only when you were finished with him."  


Arannia's arms cross in front of her chest. "You know," she says slowly, "when I found out you were going to be here, someone warned me not to trust you. He said you couldn't go through with what you'd been planning. That you were to weak to finish the job."

"Who?" Solas asks, going very still.

She ignores him. "I didn't want to believe it," she says. "But I heard what you told _her_. You've given it up. He was right."

"Who?" he demands. "Who told you we'd be here? How did you know?"

"You're not the only one who's made new friends," Arannia says, and the shadow behind her moves to strike -

"Wait!" Solas says.

He's too late. Lavellan springs from the shadows, but Solas' shout gives Arannia just enough warning to leap aside; Lavellan's dagger whistles through the air. Arannia recovers quickly, a sword produced from seemingly nowhere coming up to block Lavellan's next attack.

Solas looks down at the key in his hand, and palms the knife in his other; without magic, he's virtually useless against someone as quick as Arannia, and yet...

The shackles around his wrists are a prison, yet, but they are also a show of good faith, of trust. He needs - he _wants_ \- Athima to trust him.

There is a splintering _crack_ as Arannia slams Lavellan against a tree; the joint of her prosthetic snaps from the impact. Her dagger drives down. Arannia knocks it away, left arm pinning Lavellan to the trunk, sword poised in her right hand.

Solas throws the knife.

It's a poor throw. The blade whistles harmlessly through the air, missing entirely and embedding itself in the trunk beside Lavellan's head, but Arannia hesitates for a fraction of a second. It's enough. Lavellan's knee jerks upwards; both women tumble to the ground. Solas sweeps up Arannia's sword, a short, wicked-looking Antivan blade of dark metal - onyx, perhaps, or everite.

The grapple is over quickly, Lavellan's thighs locked around Arannia's neck, her right arm straining; Arannia gasps for air, flailing, and the hand not pinned reaches for her boot.

Solas sees the glint of metal but can do no more than shout a warning before Arannia's hidden blade drives deep into the muscle of Lavellan's thigh. 

His _vhenan_ shrieks and Arannia scrambles away; all Solas can see is red. He lunges.

Arannia's own blade pierces her from behind, protruding messily through her chest. Her blood fountains between them as she slumps, her suddenly unsupported weight dragging her away from him. She falls. 

Solas fists his hands in her tunic, hauling her up by the shoulders. "Who sent you?" he demands. "Why did you come?"

Arannia's grin is bloody, red staining her bared teeth. " _Que te den,_ " she hisses, breath rattling. "How... stupid are you? I'm just -" She chokes. "I'm just... the distraction."

" _Fenhedis,_ " he swears, letting her corpse drop unceremoniously to the ground.

A few feet away, Athima's breath is coming in short, pained heaves. He kneels at her side; Arannia's knife is still lodged in her thigh, blood soaking the fabric of her dress. "You're alright," he says, more an automatic statement than a reassurance.

"Really?" Athima pants. "Doesn't - feel that way."

"If you're still making snide remarks, you can't be all that injured," Solas tells her. The wound isn't wide, perhaps only an inch or so, but there's no way to tell how deep it is without removing the knife. He yanks his gloves off with his teeth and reaches for his pouch; he always carries a few emergency supplies, but it's likely Athima will need magical treatment, and he can't provide that at the moment.

"It isn't that deep," she says, and yanks the knife out.

"You - " Solas starts, but his rebuke dies on his lips as she doubles over, howling.

"Okay," she gasps, "I was - wrong."

Solas strips his shirt off and presses it hastily to her leg, blood soaking the finely-spun samite. "Have I told you recently how stupid you can be?" he asks.

"Not recently enough, evidently," she says, teeth gritted. She fumbles under the collar of her dress and unsnaps the buckle of her prosthetic harness; the broken stump of it slides awkwardly out of the sleeve of her dress. "What did she mean - she was the distraction?"

"I don't know," Solas says. "Nothing good, no doubt. She knew we were here, somehow, and she couldn't have tracked us through the eluvian."

"Evanuris?" Athima asks.

"I don't know," Solas repeats. "I'm growing increasingly frustrated with not knowing anything, recently." He cannot stop looking at his hand against her leg, staunching the flow of blood; only minutes ago the same hand had rested here for an entirely different reason.

 _Focus,_ he thinks. "Hold here," he says. "Keep the pressure."

He unwinds a roll of bandages with steady hands despite his apprehension. "If she'd lived, we might have questioned her," he says.

"You're the one who killed her," Athima points out.

Solas lifts her hand and the makeshift pad away from the wound; it's still bleeding aggressively. He wraps it tightly with deft precision. "It will need stitching," he says as he tucks the end. "That might have to wait, however."

Athima hums agreement. "If that was a distraction, I'm not sure I want to see the main event," she says.

"You shouldn't walk on it," he tells her, and slides an arm under her shoulder.

"You are _not_ carrying me back to camp," Athima protests.

"I'm not sure I could," Solas admits.

Her mouth falls open in surprise. "I can't decide whether you're insulting me or yourself," she says.

He scowls. "Need I remind you that I spent the majority of the last three weeks in prison? And _died_?" Still, he takes the brunt of her weight as she stands awkwardly on one leg. "Your arm?" he asks, nodding at the broken prosthetic.

"Leave it," she says grimly. "It's only my everyday one anyway. The better one's back in Kirkwall." She sighs. "One good arm, one good leg. Just my luck, isn't it?"

"One can only hope your luck improves," Solas tells her. "Shall we?"

"Hobble back into camp half-naked and covered in blood?" Athima asks lightly. "At this rate, that will be the highlight of my day."

"I beg to differ," he says, remembering the warmth of her mouth against his. By her blush, he knows she is thinking the same. 

Still, the apprehensive twist in his chest tells him that there's still misfortune yet to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me about bad first aid and gratuitous Spanish on [Tumblr](http://mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com)!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas stops walking abruptly enough for Lavellan to nearly lose her precarious one-legged balance. Her question dies on her lips as she sees what he does - the _himasanal_ bonfire they had only recently left should still be surrounded by Dalish.
> 
> It should be, and yet it appears abandoned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy writer's block, Batman! Thanks to [Trish](http://archiveofourown.org/Users/PMLolz/) for not murdering me while this chapter sat in limbo for two weeks. I fixed it! ...eventually.
> 
> Some canon-typical violence in this chapter, only slightly more than usual.

Lavellan is definitely, decidedly not staring.

She's still bleeding, after all, sluggishly through the bandage Solas had wrapped neatly around her leg, and every half-hopping step is another bolt of pain up her thigh, even leaned as she is against Solas' side. 

Solas' naked side. Which she has never seen bare. 

Okay, she's staring.

Not at his bare chest, though - okay, yes, at his bare chest, but not for that reason, although it _is_ too thin, she can count his ribs - but at the... well, she doesn't know what to call it other than a scar.

It's right over his heart, a blackish, asymmetrical thing, darkest in the center and spreading out like veins across the better part of his upper chest. Lavellan has seen poisons that cause flesh to rot and leave marks much like this one, but their spread is rapid and visible. Lavellan and Solas have scarcely been out of each others' sight for the past three weeks; he hasn't taken any wounds that she's seen, and even if he had been poisoned in that time he'd surely have shown some symptom of it by now.

If not poison, then, Lavellan doesn't know what else to compare it to, except for perhaps the taint caused by the Blight, but that doesn't make any sense -

"If you want to ask about it, just ask," Solas says, and Lavellan flushes.

"I wasn't -" she starts to say, but cuts herself off, caught out. "I'm sorry," she offers instead, "I didn't mean to... offend."

"You haven't offended," he tells her.

She waits for him to give some sort of explanation, but none seems forthcoming. "Does it... hurt?" she asks quietly.

He shakes his head.

"It doesn't... you're not in any danger from it?" she ventures.

"None that I know of," Solas says. "I've had it for the better part of nine thousand years. If it were going to kill me, it undoubtedly would have done so by now."

Lavellan splutters. Logically, she's known about Solas' age and immortality for several years now, but she's never heard him mention it so casually. "But what is it?" she asks, recovering.

Solas sighs. "It is a very long story," he tells her, "one which I promise to tell you, in time. Does that suffice?"

She wrinkles her nose. "I guess," she says.

There's still so much that he hasn't told her, she knows - about himself, and the Evanuris, and Elvhenan. She trusts him to tell her, in time. Or at least, that's what she keeps reminding herself.

Solas stops walking abruptly enough for Lavellan to nearly lose her precarious one-legged balance. Her question dies on her lips as she sees what he does - the _himasanal_ bonfire they had only recently left should still be surrounded by Dalish.

It should be, and yet it appears abandoned.

"That's not..." Lavellan begins.

"No," Solas agrees. 

" _Himasanal_ should last days," she says. "Where did they all go?"

"Nowhere good," he says grimly, and steers them towards a sturdy oak. "Will you be alright here for a moment? I want to check the artifacts."

"No, you're _not_ going alone!" Lavellan says. "This is clearly some sort of trap. No. Absolutely not!"

"I'll stay out of sight," Solas promises. "And I'll be gone less than five minutes."

"Are you out of your mind?" Lavellan splutters, but he's already disappearing into the trees.

She scowls. "I hate you," she says to no one in particular.

Five minutes isn't a very long time, she tells herself, and carefully lowers herself into a sitting position against the oak's trunk. She busies herself cleaning the blood from Arannia's sword; it's wickedly beautiful, with a serrated everite blade and a hilt wrapped in sturdy Antivan leather. With the gore removed from the base of the blade, she can make out enchantment runes carved into the metal; they aren't any symbols she recognizes, though. Her first thought is to have Dagna examine it - before she remembers that the dwarven arcanist is still in Val Royeaux, and it might be quite some time before Lavellan makes it back there.

Footsteps crunch in the trees at her back. It definitely hasn't been five minutes yet; Lavellan levers herself painfully to her feet, Arannia's sword at the ready. "Who's there?" she calls.

A tall elf staggers abruptly into view; Lavellan nearly puts the sword through his heart before she realizes it's Mavros. "Andraste's tits," she says, "you startled me."

Mavros doesn't respond, and Lavellan peers at him through the firelight; something about him seems odd. "Mavros?" she says cautiously. "Are you alright? Where is everyone?"

Her sister's First cocks his head at her; the motion makes the beads in his braids wink in the fire's glow. His gaze is oddly glassy, unfocused. "Are you drunk?" Lavellan asks.

She takes a limping step towards him; his eyes don't track the motion, but his hand snaps up unsettlingly fast, clamping down around her wrist. She recoils, jerking away automatically. "Mavros," she demands, "what's gotten into you?"

It's only then, a mere few feet away from him, that she notices his vallaslin; the skin around them is inflamed and swollen, as if the marks are fresh. Something has irritated them, Lavellan thinks, and she backs away, each step lancing pain up her leg. Mavros doesn't follow her; he does not, in fact, appear to notice that she's moved at all.

More footsteps move towards her, but she recognizes Solas' measured stride in the sound. "Something's wrong," he says, "the artifacts have been tampered with. We have to -" He trails off abruptly when he reaches her side and sees Mavros. "What's going on here?" he asks.

"Something's wrong, all right," Lavellan tells him, and that's when Mavros moves.

The First's gaze snaps up, suddenly focused, and a transformation seems to come over him; his whole body shudders, and his pupils dilate frighteningly. "Dread Wolf," he says, "we thought you'd be here."

Lavellan stiffens - Mavros doesn't know, he can't - unless -

"Who are you?" she demands. "You aren't Mavros."

Mavros' fair features split into a wide smile. "Clever," he says, "just as Andruil said you'd be. Small wonder he likes you, _da'lavaslan'fen_. Bit of a mouthful, isn't it? We'll have to come up with something shorter."

"Dirthamen," Solas says.

"He's possessed?" Lavellan asks.

"No," Solas says. "Controlled. The vallaslin - they have a way to control them. They had it already, before I - before the Veil was created."

"And someone broke the world to prevent us from using it," Mavros - no, Dirthamen - agrees. "An obstacle, no more. You couldn't kill us, Dread Wolf, so you sought to delay us until you could find a way. Well, here we are, Fen'harel. What have you found?"

Solas is silent; Lavellan swallows. 

"It looks like your time has run out," Dirthamen says, and moves lightning-fast; Lavellan leaps out of the way, but Solas doesn't react as quickly, his arms barely up in time to protect his face from the flames that suddenly jump from Mavros-Dirthamen's fingers. Lavellan lunges on her injured leg despite the agony of putting weight on it, but only manages to knick Dirthamen's shoulder with Arannia's blade. He catches her effortlessly, one hand clamped over her face and mouth - Lavellan braces herself for the inevitable flame -

\- but it never comes.

"What?" Dirthamen says, and she doesn't hesitate; Arannia's sword slices neatly through his neck, severing flesh and bone like butter.

Mavros' body drops like an Orlesian marionette with its strings cut. Lavellan gapes at Arannia's sword.

"What just happened?" she asks incredulously.

"Magebane," Solas says, wincing; his forearms are a mess of angry red burns. "I had that sword made for her. It disrupts the flow of energy from -"

"Layman's terms, please," Lavellan interrupts.

"It prevents spellcasting," Solas tells her. "Only for a short time."

"I'm keeping it," Lavellan decides instantly.

"We need to move," Solas says. "There will be more of them."

As if on cue, more footsteps crunch through the underbrush around them; dozens of elves move towards them from the trees, their movements abrupt and jerky. Lavellan peers at their faces; all of them bear swollen, inflamed vallaslin. "Lots more," she says grimly. "We need -"

"A mount," Solas finishes for her. He sweeps an arm around her waist to brace her. "Halla?"

"None big enough to carry us," she says, "but Clan Ghilain should have harts -"

Before she can finish the thought, Solas hauls her ungracefully up into his arms; despite his earlier misgivings about being able to carry her, his grip is solid. His expression betrays nothing, but the smell of scorched flesh tells her he has to be in pain.

Solas takes off running not a moment too soon; Lavellan had counted only a few dozen elves in the trees at first glance, but with more time to look there seem to be hundreds. More stagger towards them at every turn, arms outstretched, though they seem to be clumsy and ungainly, not unlike the walking corpses she became so used to during the time of the Breach - as if the energy within doesn't fit the body that contains it. The deep shadows and the possessed elves' jerky movements make it seem like the very trees themselves are moving towards them.

Solas' breaths become labored after a few hundred feet.

"There's so many," Lavellan says; she doesn't quite succeed at masking her fear. She clutches Arannia's sword awkwardly, ready to lash out should any of her bespelled kinsman reach them.

"Clan Ghilain are mine," Solas pants, "no vallaslin. They should - put up a resistance."

"That's why you remove the vallaslin," she says. "You knew this would happen?"

"One of - many reasons," he says. "I didn't know - it would work - with the Veil."

Lavellan hears the telltale sounds of battle before Clan Ghilain's camp is even visible, but as they clear the treeline Solas' footing falters; he twists to keep from crushing her as they fall, and she skids through dead leaves and underbrush, narrowly avoiding impaling herself on Arannia's sword.

One of the vallaslin-husks lurches over Solas, its outstretched hands closing around his throat. Lavellan sees him try to scramble away to no avail; she tries to get up to help and her injured leg crumples beneath her. 

More husks stumble towards them from the trees. Out of options, Lavellan throws the sword.

The curved blade lodges lengthwise in the elf-husk's head, splitting through its skull like an axe through wood. Solas seizes the hilt and yanks it out, shoving the dead elf away from him. He reaches for Lavellan, and she sees his eyes lock onto something behind her; rather than try to pick her up again, he apparently thinks better of it and flings himself to the ground on top of her, body angled protectively over hers.

A volley of arrows whizzes over both of them, most of them finding their targets in the husks with the telltale sound of tearing flesh. Both Lavellan and Solas wait with bated breath until the arrows cease, and Lavellan finally looks up as Solas extricates himself from her grip.

A line of barefaced elves hold Camp Ghislain's perimeter, already readying their bows for the next wave of enemies. Solas helps Lavellan to her feet as the formation parts to let through a thin, sweet-faced woman who Lavellan vaguely remembers from _hahren'al_ as Keeper Lanaya.

" _Hahren,_ " Lanaya says to Solas, "you're injured?"

Solas nods, holding his arms out to her; the Keeper murmurs an incantation and the angry red burns on his forearms disappear. "Her, too," Solas says, still catching his breath, and she moves towards Lavellan; the bandages around her thigh are seeping crimson, now, but the pain recedes at the Keeper's touch. Lavellan peels the edge of the wrapping away to find nothing but unmarred skin.

"Handy," she says.

"What's happened?" Lanaya demands. "The other clans have gone mad - our messengers to the city never returned -"

"The Evanuris are awake," Solas says, and it isn't as if Lavellan hadn't realized that, but hearing it aloud is like a slap in the face. "They're controlling those with vallaslin. There will be more of them, soon; you need to get your clan out of here, now."

"You'll come with us?" Lanaya asks.

Solas shakes his head. "We need a mount, and provisions," he says.

Lanaya rushes off, presumably to do his bidding. Lavellan supposes there are perks to being the Dread Wolf. 

Solas takes a few moments to catch his breath; she just stares at him helplessly. "What do we do?" she whispers.

"I don't know," he says.

"We can't fight them," she says, "they're my people - even if they're being controlled, they're still - "

"They're still our people," Solas says.

"I killed Mavros," she says, feeling sick.

"Dirthamen would have used him to kill us both," Solas reminds her.

"Did I kill him, too?" Lavellan asks.

Solas grimaces, and that's answer enough; if it were that easy, Solas would have killed all the Evanuris long ago.

"My sister is out there, too," she realizes.

"A thrall of Falon'Din," Solas tells her. "Each of the Evanuris can control those dedicated to them with the vallaslin."

"You knew this could happen?" Lavellan asks.

"Not like this," he says. "There were... rumors, before I built the Veil. I knew the Evanuris were developing something like this, but I had already resolved to entrap them. I never imagined... it took me the better part of three years to regain my strength, after I awoke. I thought that even if the Evanuris escaped the Fade, we might still have time to stop them.

"I was wrong," Solas confesses. Sorrow is etched in the lines of his face; Lavellan's heart aches. "I am so sorry."

"This isn't your fault," she says. "We can still - we can still stop them. We just need - time. A plan." She swallows, regathers her thoughts. "We need to regroup with the others," she says, "get back to Kirkwall. We still have the eluvians, right?"

The eluvian they'd used to reach Wycome is in the next town over, half a day's ride away. "Yes," Solas says.

"Right," Lavellan says. "That's the plan. First we get to Kirkwall, then we can figure out the rest. You with me?"

"Of course," Solas tells her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying to be better at posting updates on [Tumblr,](http://mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com) but my askbox is always open!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas hesitates, and Lavellan can see the struggle written in the lines of his face - the desire to be open warring with the visceral need to shore up his defenses, to cover his own vulnerability. "I _want_ you to trust me," he says. "I want to prove to you that I _deserve_ your trust."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so let's pretend this whole 'updating' thing is like. Way more common than it is. As always, this chapter has been brought to you by the infallible [Trish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PMLolz), provided she hasn't crumbled away to dust while waiting for me to finish things.
> 
> Anyway, please note the rating for this work has gone up! Potential trigger warnings are in the endnotes to avoid spoilers.

"This feels wrong," Lavellan says.

Solas doesn't answer immediately, focused on guiding the hart they'd taken from Clan Ghislain; he's not by any means what Lavellan would call an expert rider, but she couldn't exactly control an animal as large as this one-handed without having to have her mount extensively trained. It leaves her feeling a bit helpless, seated close behind Solas with her arm wrapped around his waist. Behind them, the few magically-possessed Dalish that had tailed them away from _arlathvhen_ seem to have fallen behind, either unable to keep up with their mounted quarry or no longer interested.

She feels a bit like the wolves they used to encounter in the Hinterlands, retreating from a lost fight with tails between their legs, unable to do anything but flee and regroup and lick their wounds. 

Keeper Lanaya had managed to rally what few barefaced elves there were outside Clan Ghislain, retreating towards Wycome, where they hoped the human reinforcements Deshanna had requested would be enough to hold off the vallaslin-husks. Lavellan had voiced her doubts over this plan - the husks might be under the Evanuris' control, but they were still Dalish elves, and every life lost was another one of their people, she had argued. Lanaya had maintained that the surviving Dalish - those barefaced and free - were worth the risk, and Lavellan had to trust that the sole remaining Keeper had her people's best interests at heart.

As for herself and Solas, they had split off from Lanaya's forces, making only a quick stop in Wycome to retrieve their things from Deshanna's home. It had been surreal to stand amidst her sister's space and think that she might never - that her sister could -

"What choice do we have?" Solas points out, ripping Lavellan from her train of thought. "What aid we can provide the Dalish requires communication, careful planning, a regroup of our allies. We can hardly manage such a thing from Wycome."

"I know," she says, "but -"

It seems to hit her all at once - the shock of what has just happened, the horror of the abrupt violation of her people - Mavros' face twisted with the expressions of something ancient and furious - her blade sweeping through his neck -

"Stop," she says suddenly, "stop -"

Solas reins their mount in just in time for Lavellan to slide jerkily off, staggering a few feet away before retching violently into a scraggly patch of grass. Once she starts she can't stop, emptying the entire contents of her stomach and then some, anxiety and grief twisting her insides up in knots.

At some point Solas kneels behind her, one warm soothing hand on her back and the other holding her uneven bangs out of her face. When it's finally over, he hands her their waterskin and a handkerchief without a word; it's only then that she registers the tears streaming down her face as well. She rinses her mouth and wipes her face, and turns wordlessly to tuck her head into Solas' shoulder. 

His arms come up around her, and if he finds her current state less-than-compelling, he kindly doesn't mention it. "I'm sorry," he says instead.

"It's not your fault," Lavellan says.

Solas chuckles humorlessly into her hair. "I'm relatively certain all of this is, in fact, my fault," he tells her.

She pulls back to reply, and finds herself unable to. The wry twist of his mouth doesn't quite disguise the genuine guilt in his eyes. Lavellan looks away, uncomfortable with the sudden vulnerability between them.

Solas kisses her temple, nothing more than a dry press of lips, and climbs to his feet. "Shall we move on?" he asks, offering her his hand.

She nods, lets him pull her off the ground. "Sorry," she says. "I know we're on a schedule."

Solas glances at the sky, and she follows his gaze; the slow, inexorable turn of stars overhead seems to mock them, a reminder that this is only the first night after an impossibly long day, the first of who-knows-how-many. "We won't make it to Lynholm by dawn," he says, naming the town where their eluvian is hidden. "It might be wiser to find someplace to rest. We're both exhausted, after all."

Lavellan itches to get back to Kirkwall, to regroup with their friends, to _do something_ about their situation rather than linger in the woods of the Free Marches where they're no use to anyone. Still, she knows Solas is right. "We don't exactly have gear to camp," she says.

"We can't be far from where many of the clans passed through on their way to _arlathvhen_ ," he muses. "Ghislain and Vaharel, at the very least. Could you find one of their campsites?"

"Me?" Lavellan says.

"You are the tracker and the hunter here," Solas points out.

They don't exactly have much to go on other than Lavellan's (admittedly limited) knowledge of how the clans chose their campsites; having a water source nearby had always been the preference, but well-hidden or defensible grounds took priority, as the Dalish's best defense had always been secrecy. They're not far from the Minanter river delta, having veered northwest from Wycome, but Lavellan isn't familiar with the northern clans' migration patterns. Belatedly, she wishes she'd paid better attention to the early discussions at _hahren'al_. 

They search for the better part of an hour or two before exhaustion starts to truly set in, but they don't find a campsite. What they _do_ find is an abandoned aravel, its axle splintered nearly in two and its wheel lodged firmly in a muddy gully. The aravel itself is slightly tilted from the damage, and smaller than those Lavellan is familiar with. Though the yokework where hallas would ordinarly be harnessed and the rigging of the red sails have certainly seen better days, the canvas covering is intact and it will certainly do for shelter overnight.

Lavellan sets about camouflaging the aravel as best she can, smearing mud across the bright red sails and laying broken branches about to shield their makeshift shelter from prying eyes; it's possible that they haven't been followed, but Lavellan doesn't want to risk someone or something finding them in their weakened state. 

As she finishes her work and turns back to survey the state of their supplies, she spots Solas near the aravel's small opening, turning something over in his hands. His brows are drawn together, creating the deep crease between them that Lavellan is used to seeing only when he is profoundly lost in thought.

"Something on your mind?" she asks quietly.

Solas turns toward her, fingers closing around whatever it is he's holding. "I need to tell you something," he says. "A... confession, of sorts. And I cannot help but think you'll be less than pleased with what it is."

Lavellan frowns. "Okay," she says slowly, remembering the last 'confession' he'd made to her, regarding her vallaslin.

"I want to be honest with you," he says, "which has not always been easy for me."

"Right," she agrees, albeit suspiciously.

"In the forest at _himasanal_ , when I confronted Arannia," Solas begins, "before you arrived, she revealed that she had been to Kirkwall. She had followed us there, in fact, thinking to free me from... well, from you. We had already left, of course, and so she encountered our friends instead. Dorian, and Cullen, and Sera. Possibly Varric and the others as well. She told me that her goal was Mythal's orb, which she had learned about from -"

He hesitates.

"Cole," Lavellan says. The name tastes like ashes in her mouth. She wonders if Solas feels the same guilt, the same anger that she does.

"Cole," Solas agrees. "She failed to take it; I don't know any more details than that. But she did manage to take this."

He opens his hand, and shows her a small, innocuous silverite key. 

Lavellan recognizes it, of course. Cullen had shown it to her several times, ensuring her that he had it before tucking it back underneath his armor. It's quite the feat, she thinks, that Arannia had managed to take the key from Cullen but not the orb; she would have thought the orb would have been an easier target, though she'd had no way to open it.

She knows Solas is waiting for her to say something, but after everything else that has happened in the last day, this seems triflingly small.

"You've had this for - how long now? A few hours?" she wonders aloud.

Solas nods.

"You could have freed yourself at any time," she says. "To fight Arannia, or Mav- Dirthamen, or to heal us as we ran. You could have - you could have helped Clan Ghislain fight back."

"To what end?" Solas says. "We succeeded, and we escaped. And there seemed hardly any time to explain."

"You were injured," Lavellan says, remembering the livid burns crawling up his arms. "Badly."

"Yes," Solas says. 

"You didn't free yourself," she continues, "which means - you _wanted_ to tell me. You wanted to - be honest with me, you said."

"I did," he tells her. "I do. Your trust is - paramount, to me. Not only because it seems necessary, but because..." 

He hesitates, and Lavellan can see the struggle written in the lines of his face - the desire to be open warring with the visceral need to shore up his defenses, to cover his own vulnerability. "I _want_ you to trust me," he says. "I want to prove to you that I _deserve_ your trust."

It is, Lavellan thinks, strange to see him like this; he is the Dread Wolf, ancient and powerful and untouchable, and yet in this moment he seems impossibly young - stripped of his defenses, nothing more than a man who yearns for connection, for _approval_. She reaches forward almost involuntarily, drawn in by him in this moment. Her fingers close around the key, but she does not take it from him; instead, she reaches for his wrist.

His fingers close around hers quicker than she would have expected. "Please," he says quietly, "do not do this because you think you must, or because you think you owe me something." She looks up into the grey of his eyes, so dark here and now in the small hours of the night. "If you do this, let it be because you want to, and nothing else."

Her fingers find the lock and slide the key into it without her needing to look; the silence that falls between them as the first cuff comes undone is heavy, no less so because of the weight of his gaze upon her. The silverite falls unceremoniously to the ground, its enchantment broken; Solas' hands tremble almost imperceptibly under her grasp. When she reaches for the second cuff she can feel the contained magic buzzing under his skin, held just barely at bay by what runes remain. 

The _click_ of the second cuff falling open seems deafening in the quiet that encompasses them both. Solas shudders when it comes apart, a tiny wave of green-yellow sparks coalescing in the palm of his hand before dissipating once more. Their proximity makes the hairs on Lavellan's forearm stand on end with the suddenly-released energy.

On impulse she bends her head to press a kiss to the inside of Solas' wrist, soothing the red, chapped skin there and feeling the tingle of wild magic under her lips. His fingers curl under her jaw, against the skin of her throat; he lifts her chin to look at him.

"Better?" she whispers, and he kisses her.

Her lips part for him before she has a chance to worry about her breath - travel-stale and vomit-sour - but if Solas notices, he doesn't seem to care. Key and cuff both fall to the forest floor as her hand slides up his chest, his own arms coming up around her to press her against him. This close, she can feel the rapid drumbeat of his heart; she chases it with her fingers, pressing against the hummingbird-thrum of his pulse in his throat, the smooth hairless skin there.

The tenuous, nameless _thing_ between them feels new, fragile, but she finds herself trembling for _more_ and cannot fathom a single reason why she shouldn't have it. She bites at his lower lip, giggles breathlessly when he retaliates with teeth and tongue. One of his hands works around her waist, under her coat, and she wriggles her arm through her sleeve to drop the coat in a chime of chain-link to the ground. As they come back together she has the strangest urge to trail her mouth up to his ear and settles for his throat instead, unable to comfortably reach. 

The half-stifled groan he lets out is electrifying. "Solas," she breathes, trying to nudge him towards the aravel despite the scorching open-mouthed kisses he leaves along her jaw. 

"Yes," he agrees, hands hitching around her thighs; she all but leaps at him, legs hooking around his hips as he lurches back, half-turning to deposit her on the raised floorboards of the aravel. She works at her belt and weapons with a clatter of steel and glass as her daggers and various poisons are safely pushed to one side, and watches unashamedly as Solas peels tunic and undershirt off, revealing his bare chest.

She stops him before he can close the distance between them again, content to take a moment and simply look at him. There hasn't quite been time for him to regain the weight and muscle he'd lost in the Val Royeaux dungeons, and his ribs are too prominent; the strange dark scarring across his chest is inky-black in the dark of the night. She presses her hand against the center of it, right over his heart, and traces its twisting, wandering lines with her fingers. 

Solas' left hand comes up to cover hers, and she looks up; they're nearly of a height now, with her seated in the aravel and him still standing. She pulls him flush to her, then, their mouths meeting again; her legs spread automatically around the thickness of his waist. She marvels at the heat of him against her and the broad expanse of skin available to her now. His fingers hook under the hem of her shirt, pausing briefly.

"Yes," she gasps, and his hands slide against her belly and waist, almost tickling with the barest hint of pressure. She wriggles back as he pulls the shirt up, colliding with him again once it's gone to feel his skin against hers.

His hands are everywhere now, exploring the curve of her waist and the warm spread of her back. She tilts her head to one side as his mouth blazes a path down her throat again, and then freezes.

"What?" she asks, confused.

He pulls away from her slowly, one hand trailing up to what had stopped him - the two leather cords around her neck, twisted together from constant wear. 

Oh.

 _Of course he'd recognize it,_ she thinks belatedly as he tugs his own jawbone pendant free of where it had been tucked into her breastband, warm and, yes, a little sweaty, she knows. Cole's amulet falls gently back against her chest as Solas disentangles them.

"You kept it," he says quietly.

Lavellan nods, swallowing thickly against the sudden lump in her throat. "I'm sorry," she says, feeling as if she'd crossed some sort of line by not returning the pendant to him with the rest of his things; it holds some sort of profound significance to him, she knows, though the details are a mystery. "I didn't mean to - I mean, I did take it, when you were - when I thought you were - but I meant to return it, only I -"

He presses the softest of kisses to her lips, quieting her ramble. "It's quite alright," he tells her, "you've nothing to apologize for. I'd thought it lost. But you've kept it safe, this whole time."

"Here," she says, and reaches for the cord to take it off.

He lays his hand over the pendant, pressing it against her; his hand is warm against her breastbone, almost scorching in contrast with the cool night air. "Keep it," he says. There's something wistful in his eyes. "Perhaps it was meant to be yours, all along."

It feels like a confession, the way he says it, heavier somehow than it should be. "Alright," she says, and is suddenly very, very aware that they are half-naked together, necking in the woods like Dalish teenagers. The urgency that drove them this far seems to have burst, quieting into something tender and fierce, yet no less powerful.

She _wants_ him in a way she has wanted very few people, before.

"Solas," she says. "Will you - come up here, with me? I want to - feel you."

He nods, pausing only for a minute to remove his boots before he climbs up into the aravel. She wriggles ungracefully backwards to make room for him and toes at her own boots, but is stopped by Solas' hands on her calves, unbuckling and unlacing with far more consideration than she usually gives to her gear.

Her socks are next to go, a gentle kiss pressed to the arch of each ankle before Solas lets each leg go. She reaches down to pull him up fully next to her, the canvas of the aravel's covering slipping closed behind him and blocking out what little light they had from moon and stars.

Their knees knock painfully together and she nearly elbows Solas in the head before they finally settle together, Solas chuckling quietly at Lavellan's slightly-hysterical giggle. It feels good to laugh, a spark of joy in the warm rush of desire building between them. Solas frees one hand from their embrace to conjure a wisp of greenish light that floats overhead, casting odd shadows across both of them. 

Solas rolls onto his side and reaches to pull her to follow; she flinches at the unexpected touch of his fingers on her left arm. "I'm sorry," he says instantly, pulling back, "should I not -"

"No," she interrupts, "it's fine, I just - wasn't expecting it."

" _Vhenan_ ," he says, quietly, "tell me what is alright, and what isn't. Do you not want to be touched, there? Or anywhere else?"

Lavellan feels silly and awkward, and somehow embarrassed as well; it feels strange to be making considerations for this part of her that's hers and somehow wrong as well. It hadn't been an issue, with the few lovers she'd taken before - all of them had a tendency to avoid what remained of her left arm, with no questions asked.

But this isn't just any lover - this is Solas, and it feels different for a multitude of reasons, not least of which has to do with him having been the one to remove her arm in the first place.

"You can... touch," she says, finally. "I really just wasn't expecting it. But... I don't like to be on my side - on my good side," she clarifies. "With my good arm pinned. It makes me feel - trapped."

"I understand," Solas says.

"And maybe don't... hold me down," she says, feeling foolish.

"Of course," he tells her. "I don't want to hurt you, _vhenan_. Physically, or otherwise."

"Thank you," she whispers.

He turns them so he's hovering above her, then, his weight carefully braced with his elbows on either side of her waist, and drops a kiss to her belly, just below her ribs. "Alright?" he asks.

"Yes," she says; he repeats the motion, open-mouthed this time. His tongue leaves the barest trace of wet behind, cooling quickly as he pulls away. It makes the muscles of her abdomen quiver. He noses higher, at her breastband still tightly wrapped.

"Here?" he says.

"Yes," she says again, and reaches to untie and untuck it herself. He helps her pull the wrappings away, hand hovering to one side as her breasts fall free. "Please," she says before he can ask, and rather than touch he moves in with his mouth, instead, kiss-swollen lips brushing ever so gently against the swell of her breast. She shudders, clutching him closer, and he nuzzles at the heat of her, lavishing kisses at the new exposed skin he's found. 

He pauses here and there, tonguing at the hollow of her collarbone, exploring the ropy twist of an old scar across one shoulder. She squirms as his mouth finds one nipple, his kisses now relentless rather than exploring. Heat pools low in her belly, and she hooks her legs up to drag his weight fully against her; she's rewarded with a surprised groan and a shudder against her breast.

He's so hard, already, his leggings doing nothing to disguise it. She cants her hips higher, rocking against the heat she finds, spurred on by the wetness already pooling between her own legs.

" _Vhenan,_ " he groans, and she scratches lightly at the small of his back before slipping her hand lower, past the hem of his trousers to palm brazenly at his ass.

"Alright?" she asks, echoing his own tone from before.

He hisses a curse into her breast as she scratches again, nails digging gently into plush flesh. "Wait," he says brokenly, stilling himself against her.

She takes her hand out of his pants. "No good?"

" _Very_ good," he says, "but I want to taste you."

"I rather thought you were," she starts to quip, until his hands move up her thighs to pull against her grip on him, and he slides down her body, pressing one more kiss to her belly right at the hem of her leggings.

"Oh," she says, feeling suddenly dumbstruck and unbelievably turned on at the same time. 

She doesn't miss the smug grin that passes briefly across his face before he bends to the lacing of her leggings, shimmying them down over her hips. His hands linger on her thighs and calves as he pulls the leggings down, catching one foot to mouth at one ankle.

Lavellan, for all her faults, isn't completely oblivious. She knows Solas harbors a borderline-unhealthy fascination with her legs - has caught him staring on several occasions, in fact, at the curve of her ass and the thick muscle of her thighs. Had she not been bleeding severely at the time, she might have teased him mercilessly for the look on his face as she pinned Arannia with her thighs around the late spymaster's neck.

Still, the attention he lavishes on her legs now is nothing short of worshipful, and Lavellan feels pried open and exposed under the reverence of Solas' gaze, Solas' mouth. His lips are soft against her ankles, her calves, the ticklish backs of her knees. A murmured incantation against her shin, and a bruise she doesn't even remember getting vanishes in a tingle of cool, green energy. He pays special attention, too, to the wide pink line that is all that remains of Arannia's knife in her thigh; Lavellan trembles at the wet slide of his tongue.

Finally, finally, his hands slide up to her smallclothes. Lavellan reaches for the tie herself, too keyed up to care how impatient she must seem, and she raises her hips so he can pull them away. His hands are firm against the inside of her thighs, spreading her legs; the green light overhead floats towards him as if he'd summoned it to get a better look at her.

"Solas," she absolutely _doesn't_ beg, and he bends his head to her with no further preamble.

She's already so wet from the drawn-out build up that the sound Solas' tongue makes against her seems obscene, filthy as he tastes her. Her hand scrabbles blindly for something to hold onto, nails scraping against the wood floorboards, before one of his hands joins it, fingers threading through hers. Her head falls back, helpless against the press of his lips, the slow rhythm of his tongue.

Mercifully, he doesn't stop to ask her if this is alright; she thinks if he does stop, she'll tremble into pieces. His free hand strokes a soothing path up and down the back of her thigh as his lips close around her clit, sucking gently. 

She rocks her hips in counterpoint to his rhythm, squirming a little each time his fingers brush past the ticklish underside of her knee. She can't decide whether to spread her legs further or draw him to her with her thighs; she settles for slinging one leg heavily over his shoulder, her foot digging into his back.

She makes the mistake of looking down at him only once - his grey eyes are somehow at once smug and reverent, dilated pupils seeming even darker with the reflection of the green witchlight overhead. Her head whips back against her will, cracking against the aravel floor; Solas pauses for a moment as if to check on her, and she wrenches her hand from his to shove his head back down unceremoniously. His chuckle against her clit is maddening.

She needs - she needs more, but she can't quite articulate this between moans; she bucks her hips against him and one of his hands falls from her thighs to press in below his mouth, sliding into her with no resistance. She's dripping on the floorboards, she thinks, she must be.

For several minutes - or hours, or days, perhaps - there is nothing but the slickness of his tongue, the press of one and sometimes two fingers inside her, the filthy sounds his mouth makes against her wetness. Solas' breath is coming heavily now, from effort and from desire; Lavellan has no thoughts left to spare for how loud she must be, her cries unmuffled as her hand can do nothing but clench helplessly against his head, the short hair growing in there.

"Solas," she pants, and promptly loses her train of thought at the crook of his fingers inside - "oh, _oh_ \- don't - oh, don't stop, please, I -"

He doesn't stop, of course, his tongue and fingers working insistently, maintaining their rhythm. She can't resist one last look down at him; his eyes are closed now, his brows furrowed in concentration, his face flushed; the sweet press of his mouth against her does little to disguise the sounds of him stroking himself in time with her cries.

It is this thought - Solas taking his pleasure in pleasuring her, the two of them tangled together in helpless want - that sends her hurtling over the edge, thighs clamping around his head as she cries out, riding her peak against the wet-hard press of his tongue. His fingers crook inside her and she shouts, hips jackknifing off the floor, her back arched as he holds her there on the edge, panting against her swollen clit.

"Solas!" she cries, and she feels rather than hears the muffled groan he makes as he finally breaks away, tucking his head into her inner thigh. The slick sound of his hand on his cock speeds up, now, and she briefly wishes she could see - but her legs are still trembling, her head to heavy for her to raise up.

He bites her, perhaps involuntarily, as he comes, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh of her thigh. She yelps, and he groans what she thinks is an apology before sinking bonelessly to lie over her legs, his head resting heavily on her belly.

It is a long time before either of them find the motivation to move; Lavellan thinks for a moment that Solas has fallen asleep, until he finally stirs with a sigh and climbs to his feet. Lavellan doesn't bother trying to disguise her long, appraising look at the open ties of his leggings, his now-soft cock tucked away beneath, the round curve of his ass as he disappears outside the aravel. 

He returns only a few moments later with the waterskin and what few spare things they'd packed when they'd thought this would be a short journey. The cloth he dampens is cold when he presses it to her, cleaning the mess he'd made between her legs before wiping the slick evidence from his mouth and face as well.

"Debauched is a good look on you," she says sleepily as he cleans himself up as best he can, his trousers a bit of a loss after he'd come all over them. He chokes, surprised, but it turns into a chuckle when he sees the satisfied grin spreading across her face.

"I could say the same for you," he says, rolling a few of their spare clothes into a makeshift pillow before stretching out to lie beside her, tucking it beneath both of their heads.

He rolls both of them carefully to the side, mindful of her left arm tucked beneath her. His chest is warm at her back, his arm draping heavily over her waist.

"So, that just happened," she marvels.

He makes a vague noise of agreement into the back of her head. "Is this alright?" he asks, tapping his fingers against her ribs so she knows what he's referring to.

She murmurs her assent, threading her fingers through his. "Do you think we should... talk about this?" she asks.

"Do you want to?" he asks her, rather than give a straight answer.

"...Not really," she admits. "Maybe later."

She can feel his smile against the back of her neck. It's a smile that she rather thinks she'd like to see a great deal more often.

"Maybe later," he agrees, and it's the last coherent thing she remembers him saying before she falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -returns after eight months with 5k words of smut as an apology-
> 
> This chapter contains explicit descriptions of:  
> -cunnilingus  
> -vaginal fingering  
> -masturbation  
> -body worship and scar kissing  
> -biting  
> -body dysmorphia (related to Lavellan's arm)  
> -explicit discussion of consent and boundaries  
> -Solas being a smug bastard  
> -but in a good way? who knows
> 
> As always, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://mojo-da-jojo.tumblr.com), mourning the loss of various female-presenting nipples


End file.
